Social critics (46)
Averroes
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Averroes who worked to reconcile the theology of Islam with the rationality of Aristotle, achieving both fame and infamy.
5 October 2006
Featuring: Amira Bennison, Peter Adamson, Anthony Kenny
Benjamin Franklin
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.
1 March 2012
Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Confucius
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosophy of Confucius, a body of ideas which, more than any other philosophy, has defined what it is to be Chinese.
1 November 2001
Featuring: Frances Wood, Tim Barrett, Tao Tao Liu
David Hume
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.
6 October 2011
Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris
Dickens
Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?
12 July 2001
Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen
Edmund Burke
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke, whose views on revolution in America and France were hugely influential.
3 June 2010
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Richard Bourke, John Keane
Edward Gibbon
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the writer of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, one of the most celebrated works of its kind.
17 June 2021
Featuring: David Womersley, Charlotte Roberts, Karen O’Brien
Erasmus
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the Dutch humanist scholar Desiderius Erasmus, one of the most significant figures of the Renaissance.
9 February 2012
Featuring: Diarmaid MacCulloch, Eamon Duffy, Jill Kraye
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
Hannah Arendt
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Hannah Arendt who examined totalitarianism and politics and, when covering the Eichmann trial, explored 'the banality of evil'.
2 February 2017
Featuring: Lyndsey Stonebridge, Frisbee Sheffield, Robert Eaglestone
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Hobbes
Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.
1 December 2005
Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett
Jorge Luis Borges
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges.
4 January 2007
Featuring: Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn
Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce's groundbreaking 1916 novel about growing up in Catholic Ireland.
26 November 2009
Featuring: Roy Foster, Katherine Mullin, Jeri Johnson
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Kierkegaard
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.
20 March 2008
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
23 May 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene
Marcus Aurelius
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, meditations and reputation of this stoic and philosopher king, who Machiavelli called the last of the 'Five Good Emperors'.
25 February 2021
Featuring: Simon Goldhill, Angie Hobbs, Catharine Edwards
Marx
Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.
14 July 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones
Mill
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.
18 May 2006
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan
Milton
Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.
7 March 2002
Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden
Montaigne
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Michel de Montaigne. Best known for his influential Essays, Montaigne is regarded as the father of modern sceptical thought.
25 April 2013
Featuring: David Wootton, Terence Cave, Felicity Green
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.
12 January 2017
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson
Peter Kropotkin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the Russian prince who became an anarchist and who argued that mutual aid was the key to evolution not survival of the fittest
24 February 2022
Featuring: Ruth Kinna, Lee Dugatkin, Simon Dixon
Plato's Gorgias
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock
25 November 2021
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh
Popper
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.
8 February 2007
Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright
Proust
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.
17 April 2003
Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser
Pythagoras
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and influence of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans.
10 December 2009
Featuring: Ian Stewart, Serafina Cuomo, John O'Connor
Rousseau on Education
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rousseau's ideas on how to educate children so they retain their natural selves and are not corrupted by society.
10 October 2019
Featuring: Richard Whatmore, Caroline Warman, Denis McManus
Sartre
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
7 October 2004
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
Simone de Beauvoir
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.
22 October 2015
Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd
Socrates
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.
27 September 2007
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett
Spinoza
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Spinoza whose profound and complex ideas about God had him celebrated as an atheist in the 18th century.
3 May 2007
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham
Sun Tzu and The Art of War
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Chinese military adviser Sun Tzu from the 6th century BC and the influential work of military strategy associated with him, The Art of War.
1 March 2018
Featuring: Hilde de Weerdt, Tim Barrett, Imre Galambos
Thomas Paine's Common Sense
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.
21 January 2016
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson
Thoreau and the American Idyll
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the American 19th century writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau
15 January 2009
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Tim Morris, Stephen Fender
Tocqueville: Democracy in America
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alexis de Tocqueville and his study of the American democratic system, written as an example to France of how democracy might develop there.
22 March 2018
Featuring: Robert Gildea, Susan-Mary Grant, Jeremy Jennings
Tolstoy
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and times of the 19th century Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, whose novels such as War and Peace gave expression to the compelling moral and social questions of their day.
25 April 2002
Featuring: A. N. Wilson, Catriona Kelly, Sarah Hudspith
Walter Benjamin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable philosopher and critic whose ideas, developed in the 1930s, became highly influential after his death while escaping the Holocaust.
10 February 2022
Featuring: Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger
Weber's The Protestant Ethic
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Max Weber's book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
27 March 2014
Featuring: Peter Ghosh, Sam Whimster, Linda Woodhead
William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience
Melvyn Bragg and guests Jonathan Ree, John Haldane and Gwen Griffith-Dickson discuss The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James.
13 May 2010
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, John Haldane, Gwen Griffith-Dickson
Wittgenstein
Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.
4 December 2003
Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn
Xenophon
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the ancient Greek historian and soldier Xenophon.
26 May 2011
Featuring: Paul Cartledge, Edith Hall, Simon Goldhill
Social philosophers (40)
Averroes
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Averroes who worked to reconcile the theology of Islam with the rationality of Aristotle, achieving both fame and infamy.
5 October 2006
Featuring: Amira Bennison, Peter Adamson, Anthony Kenny
Benjamin Franklin
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.
1 March 2012
Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara
Confucius
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosophy of Confucius, a body of ideas which, more than any other philosophy, has defined what it is to be Chinese.
1 November 2001
Featuring: Frances Wood, Tim Barrett, Tao Tao Liu
David Hume
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.
6 October 2011
Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris
Edmund Burke
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke, whose views on revolution in America and France were hugely influential.
3 June 2010
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Richard Bourke, John Keane
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
Hannah Arendt
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Hannah Arendt who examined totalitarianism and politics and, when covering the Eichmann trial, explored 'the banality of evil'.
2 February 2017
Featuring: Lyndsey Stonebridge, Frisbee Sheffield, Robert Eaglestone
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Hobbes
Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.
1 December 2005
Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Kierkegaard
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.
20 March 2008
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
23 May 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene
Marcus Aurelius
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, meditations and reputation of this stoic and philosopher king, who Machiavelli called the last of the 'Five Good Emperors'.
25 February 2021
Featuring: Simon Goldhill, Angie Hobbs, Catharine Edwards
Marx
Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.
14 July 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones
Mill
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.
18 May 2006
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan
Milton
Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.
7 March 2002
Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden
Montaigne
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Michel de Montaigne. Best known for his influential Essays, Montaigne is regarded as the father of modern sceptical thought.
25 April 2013
Featuring: David Wootton, Terence Cave, Felicity Green
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.
12 January 2017
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson
Peter Kropotkin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the Russian prince who became an anarchist and who argued that mutual aid was the key to evolution not survival of the fittest
24 February 2022
Featuring: Ruth Kinna, Lee Dugatkin, Simon Dixon
Plato's Gorgias
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock
25 November 2021
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh
Popper
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.
8 February 2007
Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright
Pythagoras
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and influence of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans.
10 December 2009
Featuring: Ian Stewart, Serafina Cuomo, John O'Connor
Rousseau on Education
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rousseau's ideas on how to educate children so they retain their natural selves and are not corrupted by society.
10 October 2019
Featuring: Richard Whatmore, Caroline Warman, Denis McManus
Sartre
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
7 October 2004
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
Simone Weil
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil. Admired by Albert Camus and Iris Murdoch, she achieved a great deal in her short life.
15 November 2012
Featuring: Beatrice Han-Pile, Stephen Plant, David Levy
Simone de Beauvoir
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.
22 October 2015
Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd
Socrates
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.
27 September 2007
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett
Spinoza
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Spinoza whose profound and complex ideas about God had him celebrated as an atheist in the 18th century.
3 May 2007
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham
The Buddha
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life of Siddhartha Gautama, the originator of Buddhism, and examines why his teachings have now become one of the fastest growing religions of the Western world.
14 March 2002
Featuring: Peter Harvey, Kate Crosby, Mahinda Deegalle
Thomas Paine's Common Sense
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.
21 January 2016
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson
Thoreau and the American Idyll
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the American 19th century writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau
15 January 2009
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Tim Morris, Stephen Fender
Tocqueville: Democracy in America
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alexis de Tocqueville and his study of the American democratic system, written as an example to France of how democracy might develop there.
22 March 2018
Featuring: Robert Gildea, Susan-Mary Grant, Jeremy Jennings
Tolstoy
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and times of the 19th century Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, whose novels such as War and Peace gave expression to the compelling moral and social questions of their day.
25 April 2002
Featuring: A. N. Wilson, Catriona Kelly, Sarah Hudspith
Walter Benjamin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable philosopher and critic whose ideas, developed in the 1930s, became highly influential after his death while escaping the Holocaust.
10 February 2022
Featuring: Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger
Weber's The Protestant Ethic
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Max Weber's book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
27 March 2014
Featuring: Peter Ghosh, Sam Whimster, Linda Woodhead
William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience
Melvyn Bragg and guests Jonathan Ree, John Haldane and Gwen Griffith-Dickson discuss The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James.
13 May 2010
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, John Haldane, Gwen Griffith-Dickson
Wittgenstein
Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.
4 December 2003
Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn
Xenophon
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the ancient Greek historian and soldier Xenophon.
26 May 2011
Featuring: Paul Cartledge, Edith Hall, Simon Goldhill
Philosophers of culture (39)
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aldous Huxley's dystopian 1932 novel Brave New World and its vision of a future of test tube babies, free love and round-the-clock surveillance.
9 April 2009
Featuring: David Bradshaw, Daniel Pick, Michèle Barrett
Averroes
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Averroes who worked to reconcile the theology of Islam with the rationality of Aristotle, achieving both fame and infamy.
5 October 2006
Featuring: Amira Bennison, Peter Adamson, Anthony Kenny
Benjamin Franklin
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.
1 March 2012
Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Confucius
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosophy of Confucius, a body of ideas which, more than any other philosophy, has defined what it is to be Chinese.
1 November 2001
Featuring: Frances Wood, Tim Barrett, Tao Tao Liu
Edmund Burke
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke, whose views on revolution in America and France were hugely influential.
3 June 2010
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Richard Bourke, John Keane
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
Hannah Arendt
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Hannah Arendt who examined totalitarianism and politics and, when covering the Eichmann trial, explored 'the banality of evil'.
2 February 2017
Featuring: Lyndsey Stonebridge, Frisbee Sheffield, Robert Eaglestone
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Hobbes
Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.
1 December 2005
Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett
Iris Murdoch
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the growing prominence of the philosophy of one of the most celebrated novelists of the 20th century, who developed her ideas in response to WWII.
21 October 2021
Featuring: Anil Gomes, Anne Rowe, Miles Leeson
Jorge Luis Borges
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges.
4 January 2007
Featuring: Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Kierkegaard
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.
20 March 2008
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
23 May 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene
Marx
Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.
14 July 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones
Mill
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.
18 May 2006
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan
Montaigne
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Michel de Montaigne. Best known for his influential Essays, Montaigne is regarded as the father of modern sceptical thought.
25 April 2013
Featuring: David Wootton, Terence Cave, Felicity Green
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.
12 January 2017
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson
Peter Kropotkin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the Russian prince who became an anarchist and who argued that mutual aid was the key to evolution not survival of the fittest
24 February 2022
Featuring: Ruth Kinna, Lee Dugatkin, Simon Dixon
Plato's Gorgias
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock
25 November 2021
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh
Popper
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.
8 February 2007
Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright
Pythagoras
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and influence of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans.
10 December 2009
Featuring: Ian Stewart, Serafina Cuomo, John O'Connor
Rousseau on Education
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rousseau's ideas on how to educate children so they retain their natural selves and are not corrupted by society.
10 October 2019
Featuring: Richard Whatmore, Caroline Warman, Denis McManus
Sartre
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
7 October 2004
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
Simone Weil
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil. Admired by Albert Camus and Iris Murdoch, she achieved a great deal in her short life.
15 November 2012
Featuring: Beatrice Han-Pile, Stephen Plant, David Levy
Simone de Beauvoir
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.
22 October 2015
Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd
Socrates
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.
27 September 2007
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett
Spinoza
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Spinoza whose profound and complex ideas about God had him celebrated as an atheist in the 18th century.
3 May 2007
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham
Sun Tzu and The Art of War
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Chinese military adviser Sun Tzu from the 6th century BC and the influential work of military strategy associated with him, The Art of War.
1 March 2018
Featuring: Hilde de Weerdt, Tim Barrett, Imre Galambos
Thomas Paine's Common Sense
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.
21 January 2016
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson
Thoreau and the American Idyll
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the American 19th century writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau
15 January 2009
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Tim Morris, Stephen Fender
Tocqueville: Democracy in America
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alexis de Tocqueville and his study of the American democratic system, written as an example to France of how democracy might develop there.
22 March 2018
Featuring: Robert Gildea, Susan-Mary Grant, Jeremy Jennings
Tolstoy
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and times of the 19th century Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, whose novels such as War and Peace gave expression to the compelling moral and social questions of their day.
25 April 2002
Featuring: A. N. Wilson, Catriona Kelly, Sarah Hudspith
Walter Benjamin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable philosopher and critic whose ideas, developed in the 1930s, became highly influential after his death while escaping the Holocaust.
10 February 2022
Featuring: Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger
Weber's The Protestant Ethic
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Max Weber's book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
27 March 2014
Featuring: Peter Ghosh, Sam Whimster, Linda Woodhead
Wittgenstein
Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.
4 December 2003
Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn
Moral philosophers (38)
Al-Kindi
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Al-Kindi, often described as the first philosopher in the Arabic tradition.
28 June 2012
Featuring: Hugh Kennedy, James Montgomery, Amira Bennison
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aldous Huxley's dystopian 1932 novel Brave New World and its vision of a future of test tube babies, free love and round-the-clock surveillance.
9 April 2009
Featuring: David Bradshaw, Daniel Pick, Michèle Barrett
Averroes
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Averroes who worked to reconcile the theology of Islam with the rationality of Aristotle, achieving both fame and infamy.
5 October 2006
Featuring: Amira Bennison, Peter Adamson, Anthony Kenny
Avicenna
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Avicenna, among the most important philosophers in the history of Islam.
8 November 2007
Featuring: Peter Adamson, Amira Bennison, Nader El-Bizri
Benjamin Franklin
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.
1 March 2012
Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara
Bergson and Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.
9 May 2019
Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Confucius
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosophy of Confucius, a body of ideas which, more than any other philosophy, has defined what it is to be Chinese.
1 November 2001
Featuring: Frances Wood, Tim Barrett, Tao Tao Liu
David Hume
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.
6 October 2011
Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
Hannah Arendt
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Hannah Arendt who examined totalitarianism and politics and, when covering the Eichmann trial, explored 'the banality of evil'.
2 February 2017
Featuring: Lyndsey Stonebridge, Frisbee Sheffield, Robert Eaglestone
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Heraclitus
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the ancient Greek thinker Heraclitus, immortalised by later scholars as the Weeping Philosopher.
8 December 2011
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Peter Adamson, James Warren
Hobbes
Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.
1 December 2005
Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett
Iris Murdoch
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the growing prominence of the philosophy of one of the most celebrated novelists of the 20th century, who developed her ideas in response to WWII.
21 October 2021
Featuring: Anil Gomes, Anne Rowe, Miles Leeson
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Kierkegaard
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.
20 March 2008
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt
Marcus Aurelius
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, meditations and reputation of this stoic and philosopher king, who Machiavelli called the last of the 'Five Good Emperors'.
25 February 2021
Featuring: Simon Goldhill, Angie Hobbs, Catharine Edwards
Marx
Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.
14 July 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones
Mill
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.
18 May 2006
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan
Montaigne
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Michel de Montaigne. Best known for his influential Essays, Montaigne is regarded as the father of modern sceptical thought.
25 April 2013
Featuring: David Wootton, Terence Cave, Felicity Green
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.
12 January 2017
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson
Peter Kropotkin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the Russian prince who became an anarchist and who argued that mutual aid was the key to evolution not survival of the fittest
24 February 2022
Featuring: Ruth Kinna, Lee Dugatkin, Simon Dixon
Plato's Gorgias
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock
25 November 2021
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh
Popper
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.
8 February 2007
Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright
Pythagoras
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and influence of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans.
10 December 2009
Featuring: Ian Stewart, Serafina Cuomo, John O'Connor
Roger Bacon
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss medieval English scholar Roger Bacon, an early pioneer of science who became known as Doctor Mirabilis.
20 April 2017
Featuring: Jack Cunningham, Amanda Power, Elly Truitt
Rousseau on Education
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rousseau's ideas on how to educate children so they retain their natural selves and are not corrupted by society.
10 October 2019
Featuring: Richard Whatmore, Caroline Warman, Denis McManus
Sartre
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
7 October 2004
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
Seneca the Younger
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Seneca: philosopher, playwright, tutor to Nero, one of the first great writers born in the new Roman empire after the fall of the Republic.
23 February 2017
Featuring: Mary Beard, Catharine Edwards, Alessandro Schiesaro
Simone Weil
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil. Admired by Albert Camus and Iris Murdoch, she achieved a great deal in her short life.
15 November 2012
Featuring: Beatrice Han-Pile, Stephen Plant, David Levy
Simone de Beauvoir
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.
22 October 2015
Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd
Socrates
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.
27 September 2007
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett
Spinoza
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Spinoza whose profound and complex ideas about God had him celebrated as an atheist in the 18th century.
3 May 2007
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham
The Buddha
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life of Siddhartha Gautama, the originator of Buddhism, and examines why his teachings have now become one of the fastest growing religions of the Western world.
14 March 2002
Featuring: Peter Harvey, Kate Crosby, Mahinda Deegalle
Tolstoy
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and times of the 19th century Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, whose novels such as War and Peace gave expression to the compelling moral and social questions of their day.
25 April 2002
Featuring: A. N. Wilson, Catriona Kelly, Sarah Hudspith
Philosophers of ethics and morality (37)
Al-Kindi
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Al-Kindi, often described as the first philosopher in the Arabic tradition.
28 June 2012
Featuring: Hugh Kennedy, James Montgomery, Amira Bennison
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aldous Huxley's dystopian 1932 novel Brave New World and its vision of a future of test tube babies, free love and round-the-clock surveillance.
9 April 2009
Featuring: David Bradshaw, Daniel Pick, Michèle Barrett
Averroes
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Averroes who worked to reconcile the theology of Islam with the rationality of Aristotle, achieving both fame and infamy.
5 October 2006
Featuring: Amira Bennison, Peter Adamson, Anthony Kenny
Avicenna
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Avicenna, among the most important philosophers in the history of Islam.
8 November 2007
Featuring: Peter Adamson, Amira Bennison, Nader El-Bizri
Benjamin Franklin
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.
1 March 2012
Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara
Bergson and Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.
9 May 2019
Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Confucius
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosophy of Confucius, a body of ideas which, more than any other philosophy, has defined what it is to be Chinese.
1 November 2001
Featuring: Frances Wood, Tim Barrett, Tao Tao Liu
David Hume
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.
6 October 2011
Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
Hannah Arendt
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Hannah Arendt who examined totalitarianism and politics and, when covering the Eichmann trial, explored 'the banality of evil'.
2 February 2017
Featuring: Lyndsey Stonebridge, Frisbee Sheffield, Robert Eaglestone
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Heraclitus
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the ancient Greek thinker Heraclitus, immortalised by later scholars as the Weeping Philosopher.
8 December 2011
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Peter Adamson, James Warren
Hobbes
Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.
1 December 2005
Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett
Iris Murdoch
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the growing prominence of the philosophy of one of the most celebrated novelists of the 20th century, who developed her ideas in response to WWII.
21 October 2021
Featuring: Anil Gomes, Anne Rowe, Miles Leeson
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Kierkegaard
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.
20 March 2008
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt
Marcus Aurelius
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, meditations and reputation of this stoic and philosopher king, who Machiavelli called the last of the 'Five Good Emperors'.
25 February 2021
Featuring: Simon Goldhill, Angie Hobbs, Catharine Edwards
Marx
Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.
14 July 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones
Mill
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.
18 May 2006
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan
Montaigne
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Michel de Montaigne. Best known for his influential Essays, Montaigne is regarded as the father of modern sceptical thought.
25 April 2013
Featuring: David Wootton, Terence Cave, Felicity Green
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.
12 January 2017
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson
Peter Kropotkin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the Russian prince who became an anarchist and who argued that mutual aid was the key to evolution not survival of the fittest
24 February 2022
Featuring: Ruth Kinna, Lee Dugatkin, Simon Dixon
Plato's Gorgias
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock
25 November 2021
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh
Popper
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.
8 February 2007
Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright
Pythagoras
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and influence of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans.
10 December 2009
Featuring: Ian Stewart, Serafina Cuomo, John O'Connor
Roger Bacon
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss medieval English scholar Roger Bacon, an early pioneer of science who became known as Doctor Mirabilis.
20 April 2017
Featuring: Jack Cunningham, Amanda Power, Elly Truitt
Rousseau on Education
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rousseau's ideas on how to educate children so they retain their natural selves and are not corrupted by society.
10 October 2019
Featuring: Richard Whatmore, Caroline Warman, Denis McManus
Sartre
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
7 October 2004
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
Seneca the Younger
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Seneca: philosopher, playwright, tutor to Nero, one of the first great writers born in the new Roman empire after the fall of the Republic.
23 February 2017
Featuring: Mary Beard, Catharine Edwards, Alessandro Schiesaro
Simone de Beauvoir
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.
22 October 2015
Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd
Socrates
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.
27 September 2007
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett
Spinoza
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Spinoza whose profound and complex ideas about God had him celebrated as an atheist in the 18th century.
3 May 2007
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham
The Buddha
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life of Siddhartha Gautama, the originator of Buddhism, and examines why his teachings have now become one of the fastest growing religions of the Western world.
14 March 2002
Featuring: Peter Harvey, Kate Crosby, Mahinda Deegalle
Tolstoy
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and times of the 19th century Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, whose novels such as War and Peace gave expression to the compelling moral and social questions of their day.
25 April 2002
Featuring: A. N. Wilson, Catriona Kelly, Sarah Hudspith
Cultural critics (36)
Averroes
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Averroes who worked to reconcile the theology of Islam with the rationality of Aristotle, achieving both fame and infamy.
5 October 2006
Featuring: Amira Bennison, Peter Adamson, Anthony Kenny
Avicenna
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Avicenna, among the most important philosophers in the history of Islam.
8 November 2007
Featuring: Peter Adamson, Amira Bennison, Nader El-Bizri
Confucius
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosophy of Confucius, a body of ideas which, more than any other philosophy, has defined what it is to be Chinese.
1 November 2001
Featuring: Frances Wood, Tim Barrett, Tao Tao Liu
Dickens
Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?
12 July 2001
Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen
Edmund Burke
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke, whose views on revolution in America and France were hugely influential.
3 June 2010
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Richard Bourke, John Keane
Edward Gibbon
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the writer of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, one of the most celebrated works of its kind.
17 June 2021
Featuring: David Womersley, Charlotte Roberts, Karen O’Brien
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
Hannah Arendt
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Hannah Arendt who examined totalitarianism and politics and, when covering the Eichmann trial, explored 'the banality of evil'.
2 February 2017
Featuring: Lyndsey Stonebridge, Frisbee Sheffield, Robert Eaglestone
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Jorge Luis Borges
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges.
4 January 2007
Featuring: Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn
Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce's groundbreaking 1916 novel about growing up in Catholic Ireland.
26 November 2009
Featuring: Roy Foster, Katherine Mullin, Jeri Johnson
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Kierkegaard
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.
20 March 2008
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
23 May 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene
Marcus Aurelius
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, meditations and reputation of this stoic and philosopher king, who Machiavelli called the last of the 'Five Good Emperors'.
25 February 2021
Featuring: Simon Goldhill, Angie Hobbs, Catharine Edwards
Marx
Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.
14 July 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones
Milton
Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.
7 March 2002
Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden
Montaigne
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Michel de Montaigne. Best known for his influential Essays, Montaigne is regarded as the father of modern sceptical thought.
25 April 2013
Featuring: David Wootton, Terence Cave, Felicity Green
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.
12 January 2017
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson
Peter Kropotkin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the Russian prince who became an anarchist and who argued that mutual aid was the key to evolution not survival of the fittest
24 February 2022
Featuring: Ruth Kinna, Lee Dugatkin, Simon Dixon
Plato's Gorgias
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock
25 November 2021
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh
Proust
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.
17 April 2003
Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser
Pythagoras
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and influence of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans.
10 December 2009
Featuring: Ian Stewart, Serafina Cuomo, John O'Connor
Rousseau on Education
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rousseau's ideas on how to educate children so they retain their natural selves and are not corrupted by society.
10 October 2019
Featuring: Richard Whatmore, Caroline Warman, Denis McManus
Sartre
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
7 October 2004
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
Simone de Beauvoir
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.
22 October 2015
Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd
Socrates
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.
27 September 2007
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett
Spinoza
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Spinoza whose profound and complex ideas about God had him celebrated as an atheist in the 18th century.
3 May 2007
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham
Sun Tzu and The Art of War
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Chinese military adviser Sun Tzu from the 6th century BC and the influential work of military strategy associated with him, The Art of War.
1 March 2018
Featuring: Hilde de Weerdt, Tim Barrett, Imre Galambos
Tocqueville: Democracy in America
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alexis de Tocqueville and his study of the American democratic system, written as an example to France of how democracy might develop there.
22 March 2018
Featuring: Robert Gildea, Susan-Mary Grant, Jeremy Jennings
Tolstoy
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and times of the 19th century Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, whose novels such as War and Peace gave expression to the compelling moral and social questions of their day.
25 April 2002
Featuring: A. N. Wilson, Catriona Kelly, Sarah Hudspith
Walter Benjamin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable philosopher and critic whose ideas, developed in the 1930s, became highly influential after his death while escaping the Holocaust.
10 February 2022
Featuring: Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger
Weber's The Protestant Ethic
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Max Weber's book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
27 March 2014
Featuring: Peter Ghosh, Sam Whimster, Linda Woodhead
Wittgenstein
Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.
4 December 2003
Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn
Philosophers of history (33)
Averroes
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Averroes who worked to reconcile the theology of Islam with the rationality of Aristotle, achieving both fame and infamy.
5 October 2006
Featuring: Amira Bennison, Peter Adamson, Anthony Kenny
Benjamin Franklin
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.
1 March 2012
Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
David Hume
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.
6 October 2011
Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris
Edmund Burke
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke, whose views on revolution in America and France were hugely influential.
3 June 2010
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Richard Bourke, John Keane
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
Hannah Arendt
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Hannah Arendt who examined totalitarianism and politics and, when covering the Eichmann trial, explored 'the banality of evil'.
2 February 2017
Featuring: Lyndsey Stonebridge, Frisbee Sheffield, Robert Eaglestone
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Hobbes
Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.
1 December 2005
Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett
Ibn Khaldun
Melvyn Bragg and guests Robert Hoyland, Robert Irwin and Hugh Kennedy discuss the life and ideas of the 14th-century Arab philosopher of history Ibn Khaldun.
4 February 2010
Featuring: Robert Hoyland, Robert Graham Irwin, Hugh N. Kennedy
Iris Murdoch
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the growing prominence of the philosophy of one of the most celebrated novelists of the 20th century, who developed her ideas in response to WWII.
21 October 2021
Featuring: Anil Gomes, Anne Rowe, Miles Leeson
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
23 May 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene
Marx
Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.
14 July 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones
Mill
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.
18 May 2006
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan
Montaigne
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Michel de Montaigne. Best known for his influential Essays, Montaigne is regarded as the father of modern sceptical thought.
25 April 2013
Featuring: David Wootton, Terence Cave, Felicity Green
Montesquieu
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of the French political philosopher (1689-1755) whose work on liberty and republicanism, banned at home, influenced the US constitution.
14 June 2018
Featuring: Richard Bourke, Rachel Hammersley, Richard Whatmore
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.
12 January 2017
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson
Peter Kropotkin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the Russian prince who became an anarchist and who argued that mutual aid was the key to evolution not survival of the fittest
24 February 2022
Featuring: Ruth Kinna, Lee Dugatkin, Simon Dixon
Plato's Gorgias
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock
25 November 2021
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh
Popper
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.
8 February 2007
Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright
Roger Bacon
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss medieval English scholar Roger Bacon, an early pioneer of science who became known as Doctor Mirabilis.
20 April 2017
Featuring: Jack Cunningham, Amanda Power, Elly Truitt
Sartre
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
7 October 2004
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
Spinoza
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Spinoza whose profound and complex ideas about God had him celebrated as an atheist in the 18th century.
3 May 2007
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham
Thomas Paine's Common Sense
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.
21 January 2016
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson
Thoreau and the American Idyll
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the American 19th century writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau
15 January 2009
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Tim Morris, Stephen Fender
Tocqueville: Democracy in America
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alexis de Tocqueville and his study of the American democratic system, written as an example to France of how democracy might develop there.
22 March 2018
Featuring: Robert Gildea, Susan-Mary Grant, Jeremy Jennings
Tolstoy
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and times of the 19th century Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, whose novels such as War and Peace gave expression to the compelling moral and social questions of their day.
25 April 2002
Featuring: A. N. Wilson, Catriona Kelly, Sarah Hudspith
Walter Benjamin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable philosopher and critic whose ideas, developed in the 1930s, became highly influential after his death while escaping the Holocaust.
10 February 2022
Featuring: Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger
Weber's The Protestant Ethic
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Max Weber's book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
27 March 2014
Featuring: Peter Ghosh, Sam Whimster, Linda Woodhead
William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience
Melvyn Bragg and guests Jonathan Ree, John Haldane and Gwen Griffith-Dickson discuss The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James.
13 May 2010
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, John Haldane, Gwen Griffith-Dickson
Philosophers of science (32)
Al-Kindi
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Al-Kindi, often described as the first philosopher in the Arabic tradition.
28 June 2012
Featuring: Hugh Kennedy, James Montgomery, Amira Bennison
Averroes
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Averroes who worked to reconcile the theology of Islam with the rationality of Aristotle, achieving both fame and infamy.
5 October 2006
Featuring: Amira Bennison, Peter Adamson, Anthony Kenny
Avicenna
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Avicenna, among the most important philosophers in the history of Islam.
8 November 2007
Featuring: Peter Adamson, Amira Bennison, Nader El-Bizri
Benjamin Franklin
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.
1 March 2012
Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara
Bergson and Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.
9 May 2019
Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Bishop Berkeley
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the philosopher George Berkeley, one of the most significant thinkers of the 18th century.
20 March 2014
Featuring: Peter Millican, Tom Stoneham, Michela Massimi
David Hume
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.
6 October 2011
Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris
Galen
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Roman physician and medical theorist Galen.
10 October 2013
Featuring: Vivian Nutton, Helen King, Caroline Petit
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
Hannah Arendt
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Hannah Arendt who examined totalitarianism and politics and, when covering the Eichmann trial, explored 'the banality of evil'.
2 February 2017
Featuring: Lyndsey Stonebridge, Frisbee Sheffield, Robert Eaglestone
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Hobbes
Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.
1 December 2005
Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
23 May 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene
Marx
Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.
14 July 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones
Mill
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.
18 May 2006
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan
Montaigne
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Michel de Montaigne. Best known for his influential Essays, Montaigne is regarded as the father of modern sceptical thought.
25 April 2013
Featuring: David Wootton, Terence Cave, Felicity Green
Peter Kropotkin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the Russian prince who became an anarchist and who argued that mutual aid was the key to evolution not survival of the fittest
24 February 2022
Featuring: Ruth Kinna, Lee Dugatkin, Simon Dixon
Plato's Gorgias
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock
25 November 2021
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh
Popper
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.
8 February 2007
Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright
Pythagoras
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and influence of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans.
10 December 2009
Featuring: Ian Stewart, Serafina Cuomo, John O'Connor
Robert Boyle
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Robert Boyle, a pioneering scientist and one of the first Fellows of the Royal Society.
12 June 2014
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Michael Hunter, Anna Marie Roos
Roger Bacon
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss medieval English scholar Roger Bacon, an early pioneer of science who became known as Doctor Mirabilis.
20 April 2017
Featuring: Jack Cunningham, Amanda Power, Elly Truitt
Rousseau on Education
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rousseau's ideas on how to educate children so they retain their natural selves and are not corrupted by society.
10 October 2019
Featuring: Richard Whatmore, Caroline Warman, Denis McManus
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
Simone Weil
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil. Admired by Albert Camus and Iris Murdoch, she achieved a great deal in her short life.
15 November 2012
Featuring: Beatrice Han-Pile, Stephen Plant, David Levy
Socrates
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.
27 September 2007
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett
Spinoza
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Spinoza whose profound and complex ideas about God had him celebrated as an atheist in the 18th century.
3 May 2007
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham
Thoreau and the American Idyll
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the American 19th century writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau
15 January 2009
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Tim Morris, Stephen Fender
William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience
Melvyn Bragg and guests Jonathan Ree, John Haldane and Gwen Griffith-Dickson discuss The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James.
13 May 2010
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, John Haldane, Gwen Griffith-Dickson
Philosophers of education (31)
Al-Kindi
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Al-Kindi, often described as the first philosopher in the Arabic tradition.
28 June 2012
Featuring: Hugh Kennedy, James Montgomery, Amira Bennison
Benjamin Franklin
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.
1 March 2012
Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Confucius
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosophy of Confucius, a body of ideas which, more than any other philosophy, has defined what it is to be Chinese.
1 November 2001
Featuring: Frances Wood, Tim Barrett, Tao Tao Liu
David Hume
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.
6 October 2011
Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris
Edmund Burke
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke, whose views on revolution in America and France were hugely influential.
3 June 2010
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Richard Bourke, John Keane
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
Hannah Arendt
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Hannah Arendt who examined totalitarianism and politics and, when covering the Eichmann trial, explored 'the banality of evil'.
2 February 2017
Featuring: Lyndsey Stonebridge, Frisbee Sheffield, Robert Eaglestone
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Hobbes
Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.
1 December 2005
Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett
Jan Amos Komenský
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Czech man who tried to use education to build a better understanding between the peoples of Europe who were otherwise divided by religious wars.
19 May 2022
Featuring: Vladimir Urbanek, Suzanna Ivanic, Howard Hotson
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
23 May 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene
Marx
Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.
14 July 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones
Mary Wollstonecraft
Melvyn Bragg and guests John Mullan, Karen O'Brien and Barbara Taylor discuss the life and ideas of the pioneering British Enlightenment thinker Mary Wollstonecraft.
31 December 2009
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Mullan, Barbara Taylor
Montaigne
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Michel de Montaigne. Best known for his influential Essays, Montaigne is regarded as the father of modern sceptical thought.
25 April 2013
Featuring: David Wootton, Terence Cave, Felicity Green
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.
12 January 2017
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson
Peter Kropotkin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the Russian prince who became an anarchist and who argued that mutual aid was the key to evolution not survival of the fittest
24 February 2022
Featuring: Ruth Kinna, Lee Dugatkin, Simon Dixon
Plato's Gorgias
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock
25 November 2021
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh
Popper
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.
8 February 2007
Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright
Pythagoras
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and influence of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans.
10 December 2009
Featuring: Ian Stewart, Serafina Cuomo, John O'Connor
Rousseau on Education
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rousseau's ideas on how to educate children so they retain their natural selves and are not corrupted by society.
10 October 2019
Featuring: Richard Whatmore, Caroline Warman, Denis McManus
Sartre
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
7 October 2004
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
Simone de Beauvoir
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.
22 October 2015
Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd
Socrates
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.
27 September 2007
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett
Spinoza
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Spinoza whose profound and complex ideas about God had him celebrated as an atheist in the 18th century.
3 May 2007
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham
Sun Tzu and The Art of War
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Chinese military adviser Sun Tzu from the 6th century BC and the influential work of military strategy associated with him, The Art of War.
1 March 2018
Featuring: Hilde de Weerdt, Tim Barrett, Imre Galambos
Thomas Paine's Common Sense
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.
21 January 2016
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson
Tolstoy
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and times of the 19th century Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, whose novels such as War and Peace gave expression to the compelling moral and social questions of their day.
25 April 2002
Featuring: A. N. Wilson, Catriona Kelly, Sarah Hudspith
Philosophers of mind (31)
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aldous Huxley's dystopian 1932 novel Brave New World and its vision of a future of test tube babies, free love and round-the-clock surveillance.
9 April 2009
Featuring: David Bradshaw, Daniel Pick, Michèle Barrett
Averroes
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Averroes who worked to reconcile the theology of Islam with the rationality of Aristotle, achieving both fame and infamy.
5 October 2006
Featuring: Amira Bennison, Peter Adamson, Anthony Kenny
Avicenna
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Avicenna, among the most important philosophers in the history of Islam.
8 November 2007
Featuring: Peter Adamson, Amira Bennison, Nader El-Bizri
Bergson and Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.
9 May 2019
Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
David Hume
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.
6 October 2011
Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Hobbes
Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.
1 December 2005
Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett
Jorge Luis Borges
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges.
4 January 2007
Featuring: Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Kierkegaard
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.
20 March 2008
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
23 May 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene
Marcus Aurelius
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, meditations and reputation of this stoic and philosopher king, who Machiavelli called the last of the 'Five Good Emperors'.
25 February 2021
Featuring: Simon Goldhill, Angie Hobbs, Catharine Edwards
Marx
Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.
14 July 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones
Mill
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.
18 May 2006
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan
Montaigne
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Michel de Montaigne. Best known for his influential Essays, Montaigne is regarded as the father of modern sceptical thought.
25 April 2013
Featuring: David Wootton, Terence Cave, Felicity Green
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.
12 January 2017
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson
Popper
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.
8 February 2007
Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright
Pythagoras
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and influence of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans.
10 December 2009
Featuring: Ian Stewart, Serafina Cuomo, John O'Connor
Roger Bacon
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss medieval English scholar Roger Bacon, an early pioneer of science who became known as Doctor Mirabilis.
20 April 2017
Featuring: Jack Cunningham, Amanda Power, Elly Truitt
Rousseau on Education
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rousseau's ideas on how to educate children so they retain their natural selves and are not corrupted by society.
10 October 2019
Featuring: Richard Whatmore, Caroline Warman, Denis McManus
Sartre
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
7 October 2004
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
Seneca the Younger
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Seneca: philosopher, playwright, tutor to Nero, one of the first great writers born in the new Roman empire after the fall of the Republic.
23 February 2017
Featuring: Mary Beard, Catharine Edwards, Alessandro Schiesaro
Socrates
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.
27 September 2007
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett
Spinoza
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Spinoza whose profound and complex ideas about God had him celebrated as an atheist in the 18th century.
3 May 2007
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham
The Buddha
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life of Siddhartha Gautama, the originator of Buddhism, and examines why his teachings have now become one of the fastest growing religions of the Western world.
14 March 2002
Featuring: Peter Harvey, Kate Crosby, Mahinda Deegalle
Thoreau and the American Idyll
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the American 19th century writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau
15 January 2009
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Tim Morris, Stephen Fender
Tolstoy
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and times of the 19th century Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, whose novels such as War and Peace gave expression to the compelling moral and social questions of their day.
25 April 2002
Featuring: A. N. Wilson, Catriona Kelly, Sarah Hudspith
William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience
Melvyn Bragg and guests Jonathan Ree, John Haldane and Gwen Griffith-Dickson discuss The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James.
13 May 2010
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, John Haldane, Gwen Griffith-Dickson
Wittgenstein
Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.
4 December 2003
Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn
Epistemologists (30)
Al-Ghazali
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Islamic scholar Al-Ghazali, one of the most significant and influential philosophers of the Middle Ages.
19 March 2015
Featuring: Peter Adamson, Carole Hillenbrand, Robert Gleave
Al-Kindi
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Al-Kindi, often described as the first philosopher in the Arabic tradition.
28 June 2012
Featuring: Hugh Kennedy, James Montgomery, Amira Bennison
Averroes
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Averroes who worked to reconcile the theology of Islam with the rationality of Aristotle, achieving both fame and infamy.
5 October 2006
Featuring: Amira Bennison, Peter Adamson, Anthony Kenny
Avicenna
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Avicenna, among the most important philosophers in the history of Islam.
8 November 2007
Featuring: Peter Adamson, Amira Bennison, Nader El-Bizri
Bergson and Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.
9 May 2019
Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Bishop Berkeley
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the philosopher George Berkeley, one of the most significant thinkers of the 18th century.
20 March 2014
Featuring: Peter Millican, Tom Stoneham, Michela Massimi
Confucius
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosophy of Confucius, a body of ideas which, more than any other philosophy, has defined what it is to be Chinese.
1 November 2001
Featuring: Frances Wood, Tim Barrett, Tao Tao Liu
David Hume
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.
6 October 2011
Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Hobbes
Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.
1 December 2005
Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Kierkegaard
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.
20 March 2008
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
23 May 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene
Marx
Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.
14 July 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones
Montaigne
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Michel de Montaigne. Best known for his influential Essays, Montaigne is regarded as the father of modern sceptical thought.
25 April 2013
Featuring: David Wootton, Terence Cave, Felicity Green
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.
12 January 2017
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson
Peter Kropotkin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the Russian prince who became an anarchist and who argued that mutual aid was the key to evolution not survival of the fittest
24 February 2022
Featuring: Ruth Kinna, Lee Dugatkin, Simon Dixon
Popper
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.
8 February 2007
Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright
Pythagoras
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and influence of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans.
10 December 2009
Featuring: Ian Stewart, Serafina Cuomo, John O'Connor
Roger Bacon
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss medieval English scholar Roger Bacon, an early pioneer of science who became known as Doctor Mirabilis.
20 April 2017
Featuring: Jack Cunningham, Amanda Power, Elly Truitt
Sartre
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
7 October 2004
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
Simone de Beauvoir
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.
22 October 2015
Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd
Socrates
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.
27 September 2007
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett
Spinoza
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Spinoza whose profound and complex ideas about God had him celebrated as an atheist in the 18th century.
3 May 2007
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham
Tolstoy
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and times of the 19th century Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, whose novels such as War and Peace gave expression to the compelling moral and social questions of their day.
25 April 2002
Featuring: A. N. Wilson, Catriona Kelly, Sarah Hudspith
Walter Benjamin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable philosopher and critic whose ideas, developed in the 1930s, became highly influential after his death while escaping the Holocaust.
10 February 2022
Featuring: Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger
William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience
Melvyn Bragg and guests Jonathan Ree, John Haldane and Gwen Griffith-Dickson discuss The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James.
13 May 2010
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, John Haldane, Gwen Griffith-Dickson
Wittgenstein
Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.
4 December 2003
Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn
Political philosophers (30)
Averroes
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Averroes who worked to reconcile the theology of Islam with the rationality of Aristotle, achieving both fame and infamy.
5 October 2006
Featuring: Amira Bennison, Peter Adamson, Anthony Kenny
Benjamin Franklin
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.
1 March 2012
Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Edmund Burke
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke, whose views on revolution in America and France were hugely influential.
3 June 2010
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Richard Bourke, John Keane
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
Hannah Arendt
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Hannah Arendt who examined totalitarianism and politics and, when covering the Eichmann trial, explored 'the banality of evil'.
2 February 2017
Featuring: Lyndsey Stonebridge, Frisbee Sheffield, Robert Eaglestone
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Hobbes
Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.
1 December 2005
Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett
Lenin
Melvyn Bragg investigates what drove the Soviet leader Lenin, and enabled him to develop a model to export communism and build an original political system that remained intact for over seventy years.
16 March 2000
Featuring: Robert Service, Vitali Vitaliev
Marcus Aurelius
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, meditations and reputation of this stoic and philosopher king, who Machiavelli called the last of the 'Five Good Emperors'.
25 February 2021
Featuring: Simon Goldhill, Angie Hobbs, Catharine Edwards
Mill
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.
18 May 2006
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan
Milton
Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.
7 March 2002
Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden
Montaigne
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Michel de Montaigne. Best known for his influential Essays, Montaigne is regarded as the father of modern sceptical thought.
25 April 2013
Featuring: David Wootton, Terence Cave, Felicity Green
Montesquieu
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of the French political philosopher (1689-1755) whose work on liberty and republicanism, banned at home, influenced the US constitution.
14 June 2018
Featuring: Richard Bourke, Rachel Hammersley, Richard Whatmore
Peter Kropotkin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the Russian prince who became an anarchist and who argued that mutual aid was the key to evolution not survival of the fittest
24 February 2022
Featuring: Ruth Kinna, Lee Dugatkin, Simon Dixon
Popper
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.
8 February 2007
Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright
Pythagoras
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and influence of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans.
10 December 2009
Featuring: Ian Stewart, Serafina Cuomo, John O'Connor
Rousseau on Education
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rousseau's ideas on how to educate children so they retain their natural selves and are not corrupted by society.
10 October 2019
Featuring: Richard Whatmore, Caroline Warman, Denis McManus
Sartre
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
7 October 2004
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
Seneca the Younger
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Seneca: philosopher, playwright, tutor to Nero, one of the first great writers born in the new Roman empire after the fall of the Republic.
23 February 2017
Featuring: Mary Beard, Catharine Edwards, Alessandro Schiesaro
Simone Weil
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil. Admired by Albert Camus and Iris Murdoch, she achieved a great deal in her short life.
15 November 2012
Featuring: Beatrice Han-Pile, Stephen Plant, David Levy
Simone de Beauvoir
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.
22 October 2015
Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd
Socrates
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.
27 September 2007
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett
Sun Tzu and The Art of War
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Chinese military adviser Sun Tzu from the 6th century BC and the influential work of military strategy associated with him, The Art of War.
1 March 2018
Featuring: Hilde de Weerdt, Tim Barrett, Imre Galambos
Thomas Paine's Common Sense
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.
21 January 2016
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson
Tocqueville: Democracy in America
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alexis de Tocqueville and his study of the American democratic system, written as an example to France of how democracy might develop there.
22 March 2018
Featuring: Robert Gildea, Susan-Mary Grant, Jeremy Jennings
Tolstoy
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and times of the 19th century Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, whose novels such as War and Peace gave expression to the compelling moral and social questions of their day.
25 April 2002
Featuring: A. N. Wilson, Catriona Kelly, Sarah Hudspith
Xenophon
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the ancient Greek historian and soldier Xenophon.
26 May 2011
Featuring: Paul Cartledge, Edith Hall, Simon Goldhill
Metaphysicians (29)
Al-Ghazali
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Islamic scholar Al-Ghazali, one of the most significant and influential philosophers of the Middle Ages.
19 March 2015
Featuring: Peter Adamson, Carole Hillenbrand, Robert Gleave
Al-Kindi
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Al-Kindi, often described as the first philosopher in the Arabic tradition.
28 June 2012
Featuring: Hugh Kennedy, James Montgomery, Amira Bennison
Averroes
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Averroes who worked to reconcile the theology of Islam with the rationality of Aristotle, achieving both fame and infamy.
5 October 2006
Featuring: Amira Bennison, Peter Adamson, Anthony Kenny
Avicenna
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Avicenna, among the most important philosophers in the history of Islam.
8 November 2007
Featuring: Peter Adamson, Amira Bennison, Nader El-Bizri
Bergson and Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.
9 May 2019
Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Bishop Berkeley
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the philosopher George Berkeley, one of the most significant thinkers of the 18th century.
20 March 2014
Featuring: Peter Millican, Tom Stoneham, Michela Massimi
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Hobbes
Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.
1 December 2005
Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Kierkegaard
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.
20 March 2008
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
23 May 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene
Marx
Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.
14 July 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones
Montaigne
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Michel de Montaigne. Best known for his influential Essays, Montaigne is regarded as the father of modern sceptical thought.
25 April 2013
Featuring: David Wootton, Terence Cave, Felicity Green
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.
12 January 2017
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson
Peter Kropotkin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the Russian prince who became an anarchist and who argued that mutual aid was the key to evolution not survival of the fittest
24 February 2022
Featuring: Ruth Kinna, Lee Dugatkin, Simon Dixon
Popper
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.
8 February 2007
Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright
Pythagoras
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and influence of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans.
10 December 2009
Featuring: Ian Stewart, Serafina Cuomo, John O'Connor
Roger Bacon
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss medieval English scholar Roger Bacon, an early pioneer of science who became known as Doctor Mirabilis.
20 April 2017
Featuring: Jack Cunningham, Amanda Power, Elly Truitt
Sartre
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
7 October 2004
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
Simone de Beauvoir
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.
22 October 2015
Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd
Socrates
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.
27 September 2007
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett
Spinoza
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Spinoza whose profound and complex ideas about God had him celebrated as an atheist in the 18th century.
3 May 2007
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham
St Thomas Aquinas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss St Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic Church's foremost western philosopher and theologian.
17 September 2009
Featuring: Martin Palmer, John Haldane, Annabel Brett
Tolstoy
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and times of the 19th century Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, whose novels such as War and Peace gave expression to the compelling moral and social questions of their day.
25 April 2002
Featuring: A. N. Wilson, Catriona Kelly, Sarah Hudspith
Walter Benjamin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable philosopher and critic whose ideas, developed in the 1930s, became highly influential after his death while escaping the Holocaust.
10 February 2022
Featuring: Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger
William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience
Melvyn Bragg and guests Jonathan Ree, John Haldane and Gwen Griffith-Dickson discuss The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James.
13 May 2010
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, John Haldane, Gwen Griffith-Dickson
Wittgenstein
Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.
4 December 2003
Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn
Ontologists (29)
Al-Kindi
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Al-Kindi, often described as the first philosopher in the Arabic tradition.
28 June 2012
Featuring: Hugh Kennedy, James Montgomery, Amira Bennison
Averroes
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Averroes who worked to reconcile the theology of Islam with the rationality of Aristotle, achieving both fame and infamy.
5 October 2006
Featuring: Amira Bennison, Peter Adamson, Anthony Kenny
Avicenna
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Avicenna, among the most important philosophers in the history of Islam.
8 November 2007
Featuring: Peter Adamson, Amira Bennison, Nader El-Bizri
Bergson and Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.
9 May 2019
Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
David Hume
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.
6 October 2011
Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Heraclitus
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the ancient Greek thinker Heraclitus, immortalised by later scholars as the Weeping Philosopher.
8 December 2011
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Peter Adamson, James Warren
Hobbes
Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.
1 December 2005
Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Kierkegaard
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.
20 March 2008
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
23 May 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene
Marx
Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.
14 July 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones
Montaigne
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Michel de Montaigne. Best known for his influential Essays, Montaigne is regarded as the father of modern sceptical thought.
25 April 2013
Featuring: David Wootton, Terence Cave, Felicity Green
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.
12 January 2017
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson
Peter Kropotkin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the Russian prince who became an anarchist and who argued that mutual aid was the key to evolution not survival of the fittest
24 February 2022
Featuring: Ruth Kinna, Lee Dugatkin, Simon Dixon
Plato's Gorgias
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock
25 November 2021
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh
Popper
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.
8 February 2007
Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright
Pythagoras
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and influence of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans.
10 December 2009
Featuring: Ian Stewart, Serafina Cuomo, John O'Connor
Roger Bacon
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss medieval English scholar Roger Bacon, an early pioneer of science who became known as Doctor Mirabilis.
20 April 2017
Featuring: Jack Cunningham, Amanda Power, Elly Truitt
Sartre
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
7 October 2004
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
Simone de Beauvoir
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.
22 October 2015
Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd
Socrates
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.
27 September 2007
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett
Spinoza
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Spinoza whose profound and complex ideas about God had him celebrated as an atheist in the 18th century.
3 May 2007
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham
Tolstoy
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and times of the 19th century Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, whose novels such as War and Peace gave expression to the compelling moral and social questions of their day.
25 April 2002
Featuring: A. N. Wilson, Catriona Kelly, Sarah Hudspith
Walter Benjamin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable philosopher and critic whose ideas, developed in the 1930s, became highly influential after his death while escaping the Holocaust.
10 February 2022
Featuring: Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger
William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience
Melvyn Bragg and guests Jonathan Ree, John Haldane and Gwen Griffith-Dickson discuss The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James.
13 May 2010
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, John Haldane, Gwen Griffith-Dickson
Wittgenstein
Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.
4 December 2003
Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn
Philosophy writers (27)
Al-Kindi
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Al-Kindi, often described as the first philosopher in the Arabic tradition.
28 June 2012
Featuring: Hugh Kennedy, James Montgomery, Amira Bennison
Benjamin Franklin
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.
1 March 2012
Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara
Bergson and Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.
9 May 2019
Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
David Hume
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.
6 October 2011
Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris
Galen
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Roman physician and medical theorist Galen.
10 October 2013
Featuring: Vivian Nutton, Helen King, Caroline Petit
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
Hannah Arendt
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Hannah Arendt who examined totalitarianism and politics and, when covering the Eichmann trial, explored 'the banality of evil'.
2 February 2017
Featuring: Lyndsey Stonebridge, Frisbee Sheffield, Robert Eaglestone
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Iris Murdoch
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the growing prominence of the philosophy of one of the most celebrated novelists of the 20th century, who developed her ideas in response to WWII.
21 October 2021
Featuring: Anil Gomes, Anne Rowe, Miles Leeson
Jorge Luis Borges
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges.
4 January 2007
Featuring: Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Kierkegaard
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.
20 March 2008
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
23 May 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene
Marcus Aurelius
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, meditations and reputation of this stoic and philosopher king, who Machiavelli called the last of the 'Five Good Emperors'.
25 February 2021
Featuring: Simon Goldhill, Angie Hobbs, Catharine Edwards
Mill
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.
18 May 2006
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan
Montaigne
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Michel de Montaigne. Best known for his influential Essays, Montaigne is regarded as the father of modern sceptical thought.
25 April 2013
Featuring: David Wootton, Terence Cave, Felicity Green
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.
12 January 2017
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson
Peter Kropotkin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the Russian prince who became an anarchist and who argued that mutual aid was the key to evolution not survival of the fittest
24 February 2022
Featuring: Ruth Kinna, Lee Dugatkin, Simon Dixon
Plato's Gorgias
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock
25 November 2021
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh
Popper
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.
8 February 2007
Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
Socrates
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.
27 September 2007
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett
Spinoza
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Spinoza whose profound and complex ideas about God had him celebrated as an atheist in the 18th century.
3 May 2007
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham
Walter Benjamin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable philosopher and critic whose ideas, developed in the 1930s, became highly influential after his death while escaping the Holocaust.
10 February 2022
Featuring: Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger
Wittgenstein
Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.
4 December 2003
Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn
Philosophers of religion (26)
Al-Kindi
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Al-Kindi, often described as the first philosopher in the Arabic tradition.
28 June 2012
Featuring: Hugh Kennedy, James Montgomery, Amira Bennison
Averroes
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Averroes who worked to reconcile the theology of Islam with the rationality of Aristotle, achieving both fame and infamy.
5 October 2006
Featuring: Amira Bennison, Peter Adamson, Anthony Kenny
Avicenna
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Avicenna, among the most important philosophers in the history of Islam.
8 November 2007
Featuring: Peter Adamson, Amira Bennison, Nader El-Bizri
Benjamin Franklin
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.
1 March 2012
Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara
Bergson and Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.
9 May 2019
Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
David Hume
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.
6 October 2011
Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris
Edmund Burke
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke, whose views on revolution in America and France were hugely influential.
3 June 2010
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Richard Bourke, John Keane
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Heraclitus
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the ancient Greek thinker Heraclitus, immortalised by later scholars as the Weeping Philosopher.
8 December 2011
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Peter Adamson, James Warren
Hobbes
Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.
1 December 2005
Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Kierkegaard
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.
20 March 2008
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
23 May 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene
Marx
Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.
14 July 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones
Milton
Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.
7 March 2002
Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden
Montaigne
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Michel de Montaigne. Best known for his influential Essays, Montaigne is regarded as the father of modern sceptical thought.
25 April 2013
Featuring: David Wootton, Terence Cave, Felicity Green
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.
12 January 2017
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson
Popper
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.
8 February 2007
Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright
Roger Bacon
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss medieval English scholar Roger Bacon, an early pioneer of science who became known as Doctor Mirabilis.
20 April 2017
Featuring: Jack Cunningham, Amanda Power, Elly Truitt
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
Simone Weil
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil. Admired by Albert Camus and Iris Murdoch, she achieved a great deal in her short life.
15 November 2012
Featuring: Beatrice Han-Pile, Stephen Plant, David Levy
Spinoza
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Spinoza whose profound and complex ideas about God had him celebrated as an atheist in the 18th century.
3 May 2007
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham
Thomas Paine's Common Sense
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.
21 January 2016
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson
Tolstoy
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and times of the 19th century Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, whose novels such as War and Peace gave expression to the compelling moral and social questions of their day.
25 April 2002
Featuring: A. N. Wilson, Catriona Kelly, Sarah Hudspith
William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience
Melvyn Bragg and guests Jonathan Ree, John Haldane and Gwen Griffith-Dickson discuss The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James.
13 May 2010
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, John Haldane, Gwen Griffith-Dickson
Theorists on Western civilization (23)
Benjamin Franklin
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.
1 March 2012
Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
David Hume
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.
6 October 2011
Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris
Edward Gibbon
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the writer of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, one of the most celebrated works of its kind.
17 June 2021
Featuring: David Womersley, Charlotte Roberts, Karen O’Brien
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Hobbes
Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.
1 December 2005
Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
23 May 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene
Marx
Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.
14 July 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones
Mill
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.
18 May 2006
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan
Montaigne
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Michel de Montaigne. Best known for his influential Essays, Montaigne is regarded as the father of modern sceptical thought.
25 April 2013
Featuring: David Wootton, Terence Cave, Felicity Green
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.
12 January 2017
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson
Peter Kropotkin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the Russian prince who became an anarchist and who argued that mutual aid was the key to evolution not survival of the fittest
24 February 2022
Featuring: Ruth Kinna, Lee Dugatkin, Simon Dixon
Plato's Gorgias
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock
25 November 2021
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh
Popper
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.
8 February 2007
Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright
Pythagoras
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and influence of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans.
10 December 2009
Featuring: Ian Stewart, Serafina Cuomo, John O'Connor
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
Socrates
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.
27 September 2007
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett
Thomas Paine's Common Sense
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.
21 January 2016
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson
Walter Benjamin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable philosopher and critic whose ideas, developed in the 1930s, became highly influential after his death while escaping the Holocaust.
10 February 2022
Featuring: Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger
Wittgenstein
Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.
4 December 2003
Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn
Philosophers of literature (22)
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aldous Huxley's dystopian 1932 novel Brave New World and its vision of a future of test tube babies, free love and round-the-clock surveillance.
9 April 2009
Featuring: David Bradshaw, Daniel Pick, Michèle Barrett
Averroes
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Averroes who worked to reconcile the theology of Islam with the rationality of Aristotle, achieving both fame and infamy.
5 October 2006
Featuring: Amira Bennison, Peter Adamson, Anthony Kenny
Benjamin Franklin
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.
1 March 2012
Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
Iris Murdoch
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the growing prominence of the philosophy of one of the most celebrated novelists of the 20th century, who developed her ideas in response to WWII.
21 October 2021
Featuring: Anil Gomes, Anne Rowe, Miles Leeson
Jorge Luis Borges
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges.
4 January 2007
Featuring: Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Montaigne
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Michel de Montaigne. Best known for his influential Essays, Montaigne is regarded as the father of modern sceptical thought.
25 April 2013
Featuring: David Wootton, Terence Cave, Felicity Green
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.
12 January 2017
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson
Plato's Gorgias
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock
25 November 2021
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh
Proust
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.
17 April 2003
Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser
Roger Bacon
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss medieval English scholar Roger Bacon, an early pioneer of science who became known as Doctor Mirabilis.
20 April 2017
Featuring: Jack Cunningham, Amanda Power, Elly Truitt
Rousseau on Education
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rousseau's ideas on how to educate children so they retain their natural selves and are not corrupted by society.
10 October 2019
Featuring: Richard Whatmore, Caroline Warman, Denis McManus
Sartre
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
7 October 2004
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
Seneca the Younger
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Seneca: philosopher, playwright, tutor to Nero, one of the first great writers born in the new Roman empire after the fall of the Republic.
23 February 2017
Featuring: Mary Beard, Catharine Edwards, Alessandro Schiesaro
Simone de Beauvoir
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.
22 October 2015
Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd
Socrates
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.
27 September 2007
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett
Tolstoy
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and times of the 19th century Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, whose novels such as War and Peace gave expression to the compelling moral and social questions of their day.
25 April 2002
Featuring: A. N. Wilson, Catriona Kelly, Sarah Hudspith
Walter Benjamin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable philosopher and critic whose ideas, developed in the 1930s, became highly influential after his death while escaping the Holocaust.
10 February 2022
Featuring: Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger
Anglican saints (21)
Alcuin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the cleric, educator and poet from York who put learning for its own sake at the heart of the Carolingian Renaissance
30 January 2020
Featuring: Joanna Story, Andy Orchard, Mary Garrison
Alfred and the Battle of Edington
Melvyn Bragg discusses King Alfred, the defeat of the Vikings at Battle of Edington and Alfred's project to create a culture of Englishness.
7 April 2005
Featuring: Richard Gameson, Sarah Foot, John Hines
Bishop Berkeley
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the philosopher George Berkeley, one of the most significant thinkers of the 18th century.
20 March 2014
Featuring: Peter Millican, Tom Stoneham, Michela Massimi
Christina Rossetti
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Victorian poet Christina Rossetti.
1 December 2011
Featuring: Dinah Birch, Rhian Williams, Nicholas Shrimpton
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Bonhoeffer's ideas about Christian ethics, the role of the Church in a secular world, and his attempts to overthrow Hitler.
27 September 2018
Featuring: Stephen Plant, Eleanor McLaughlin, Tom Greggs
Frederick Douglass
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the prominent abolitionist, who in 1845 told his story in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.
9 February 2018
Featuring: Celeste-Marie Bernier, Karen Salt, Nicholas Guyatt
George Fox and the Quakers
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the foundation of the Religious Society of Friends, otherwise known as the Quakers, in the 17th century.
5 April 2012
Featuring: Justin Champion, John Coffey, Kate Peters
Hildegard of Bingen
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the medieval mystic, composer and writer Hildegard of Bingen.
26 June 2014
Featuring: Miri Rubin, William Flynn, Almut Suerbaum
Johannes Kepler
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the German astronomer Johannes Kepler.
29 December 2016
Featuring: David Wootton, Ulinka Rublack, Adam Mosley
John Wesley and Methodism
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the difference John Wesley made during the Christian Revival of the 18th Century, developing Methodism into a major movement around the world
10 December 2020
Featuring: Stephen Plant, Eryn White, William Gibson
John Wycliff and the Lollards
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the medieval philosopher and theologian John Wyclif and his followers, the Lollards.
16 June 2011
Featuring: Anthony Kenny, Anne Hudson, Rob Lutton
Johnson
Melvyn Bragg discusses Samuel Johnson, a giant of 18th century literature, language and letters, and perhaps the most quotable Englishman to have ever lifted a pen.
27 October 2005
Featuring: John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Judith Hawley
Margery Kempe and English Mysticism
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Margery Kempe (1373-1438), the English mystic who went to Jerusalem and dictated her life story, said to be the first autobiography in English.
2 June 2016
Featuring: Miri Rubin, Katherine Lewis, Anthony Bale
Mary Magdalene
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Mary Magdalene, one of the best-known figures in the Bible.
25 February 2016
Featuring: Joanne Anderson, Eamon Duffy, Joan Taylor
Octavia Hill
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Victorian reformer Octavia Hill, pioneer of social housing and campaigner for public open spaces.
7 April 2011
Featuring: Dinah Birch, Lawrence Goldman, Gillian Darley
Saint Cuthbert
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life of the Northumbrian monk, priest and hermit who lived on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne and became one of England's most revered saints.
28 January 2021
Featuring: Jane Hawkes, Sarah Foot, John Hines
St Hilda
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss St Hilda, who led a large and influential network of monasteries in 7th century Britain.
5 April 2007
Featuring: John Blair, Rosemary Cramp, Sarah Foot
St Thomas Aquinas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss St Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic Church's foremost western philosopher and theologian.
17 September 2009
Featuring: Martin Palmer, John Haldane, Annabel Brett
The Venerable Bede
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Venerable Bede, who revolutionised history and scholarship, and became adopted by Rome as the last of the founding fathers of Christian religion.
25 November 2004
Featuring: Richard Gameson, Sarah Foot, Michelle Brown
Thomas Becket
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Becket, chancellor turned archbishop, who was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral and whose tomb became a centre of pilgrimage across Europe.
14 December 2017
Featuring: Laura Ashe, Michael Staunton, Danica Summerlin
Wilberforce
In an unusual edition of In Our Time, marking the 1807 Abolition of the Slave Trade, Melvyn Bragg leaves the studio to examine the life of William Wilberforce.
22 February 2007
Featuring
Philosophers of art (20)
Al-Kindi
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Al-Kindi, often described as the first philosopher in the Arabic tradition.
28 June 2012
Featuring: Hugh Kennedy, James Montgomery, Amira Bennison
Bergson and Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.
9 May 2019
Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair
David Hume
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.
6 October 2011
Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris
Edmund Burke
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke, whose views on revolution in America and France were hugely influential.
3 June 2010
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Richard Bourke, John Keane
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Jorge Luis Borges
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges.
4 January 2007
Featuring: Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Kierkegaard
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.
20 March 2008
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.
12 January 2017
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson
Proust
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.
17 April 2003
Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser
Rousseau on Education
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rousseau's ideas on how to educate children so they retain their natural selves and are not corrupted by society.
10 October 2019
Featuring: Richard Whatmore, Caroline Warman, Denis McManus
Sartre
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
7 October 2004
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
Seneca the Younger
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Seneca: philosopher, playwright, tutor to Nero, one of the first great writers born in the new Roman empire after the fall of the Republic.
23 February 2017
Featuring: Mary Beard, Catharine Edwards, Alessandro Schiesaro
Simone de Beauvoir
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.
22 October 2015
Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd
Socrates
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.
27 September 2007
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett
Walter Benjamin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable philosopher and critic whose ideas, developed in the 1930s, became highly influential after his death while escaping the Holocaust.
10 February 2022
Featuring: Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger
Wittgenstein
Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.
4 December 2003
Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn
Fellows of the Royal Society (20)
Alan Turing
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and life of the founder of computer science - whose work helped crack enemy codes in WW2 - and his exploration of artificial intelligence.
15 October 2020
Featuring: Leslie Ann Goldberg, Simon Schaffer, Andrew Hodges
Alfred Russel Wallace
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Victorian pioneer of evolutionary theory Alfred Russel Wallace.
21 March 2013
Featuring: Steve Jones, George Beccaloni, Ted Benton
Benjamin Franklin
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.
1 March 2012
Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Booth's Life and Labour Survey
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Charles Booth's ambitious project to discover how many people in late Victorian London were living in poverty, and understand why
10 June 2021
Featuring: Emma Griffin, Sarah Wise, Lawrence Goldman
Brunel
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the Victorian engineer responsible for bridges, tunnels and railways still in use today.
13 November 2014
Featuring: Julia Elton, Ben Marsden, Crosbie Smith
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Gauss, 'prince of mathematicians', including those on number theory, geometry, probability theory, astronomy and electromagnetism.
30 November 2017
Featuring: Marcus du Sautoy, Colva Roney-Dougal, Nick Evans
Darwin: On the Origins of Charles Darwin
Melvyn Bragg presents a series about the life and work of Charles Darwin. Darwin's early life and time at Cambridge, where his interests shifted from religion to natural science.
5 January 2009
Featuring: Jim Moore, Steve Jones, David Norman, Colin Higgins
Dorothy Hodgkin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work, ideas and life of the woman who won the 1964 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her work on the structures of vitamin B12 and penicillin.
3 October 2019
Featuring: Georgina Ferry, Judith Howard, Patricia Fara
Edward Gibbon
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the writer of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, one of the most celebrated works of its kind.
17 June 2021
Featuring: David Womersley, Charlotte Roberts, Karen O’Brien
John Dalton
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss scientist John Dalton, who pioneered the development of atomic theory and carried out research into meteorology and colour blindness.
27 October 2016
Featuring: Jim Bennett, Aileen Fyfe, James Sumner
Maxwell
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and work of the often overlooked 19th century Scottish scientist, and his enormous contribution to the creation of the technological age in which we live.
2 October 2003
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Peter Harman, Joanna Haigh
Michael Faraday
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Michael Faraday, the most famous British scientist of the 19th century.
25 December 2015
Featuring: Geoffrey Cantor, Laura Herz, Frank James
Montesquieu
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of the French political philosopher (1689-1755) whose work on liberty and republicanism, banned at home, influenced the US constitution.
14 June 2018
Featuring: Richard Bourke, Rachel Hammersley, Richard Whatmore
Paul Dirac
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Bristolian theoretical physicist, ranked alongside Einstein by his peers, who won a Nobel for his work on quantum mechanics.
5 March 2020
Featuring: Graham Farmelo, Valerie Gibson, David Berman
Pierre-Simon Laplace
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great French mathematician who tackled questions on the stability of the Solar System and planet rotation and devised the basis for metrication
8 April 2021
Featuring: Marcus du Sautoy, Timothy Gowers, Colva Roney-Dougal
Pitt Rivers
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of the Victorian anthropologist and archaeologist Augustus Pitt-Rivers.
28 February 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Richard Bradley, Dan Hicks
The Needham Question
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Needham Question, which asks why China’s medieval technological advancement was overtaken by that of a relative backwater called Europe.
19 October 2006
Featuring: Chris Cullen, Tim Barrett, Frances Wood
Voyages of James Cook
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the science behind Capt James Cook's three voyages of discovery, from 1768 to 1779, one of over a thousand ideas suggested by listeners.
3 December 2015
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Rebekah Higgitt, Sophie Forgan
William and Caroline Herschel
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pioneering brother and sister who, between them, discovered Uranus, comets, double stars and infrared light at the end of the 18th century.
11 November 2021
Featuring: Monica Grady, Carolin Crawford, Jim Bennett
Writers about activism and social change (19)
Benjamin Franklin
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.
1 March 2012
Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
David Hume
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.
6 October 2011
Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris
Dickens
Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?
12 July 2001
Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
23 May 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene
Marx
Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.
14 July 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones
Milton
Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.
7 March 2002
Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.
12 January 2017
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson
Popper
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.
8 February 2007
Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright
Proust
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.
17 April 2003
Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser
Pythagoras
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and influence of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans.
10 December 2009
Featuring: Ian Stewart, Serafina Cuomo, John O'Connor
Rousseau on Education
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rousseau's ideas on how to educate children so they retain their natural selves and are not corrupted by society.
10 October 2019
Featuring: Richard Whatmore, Caroline Warman, Denis McManus
Thomas Paine's Common Sense
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.
21 January 2016
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson
Tolstoy
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and times of the 19th century Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, whose novels such as War and Peace gave expression to the compelling moral and social questions of their day.
25 April 2002
Featuring: A. N. Wilson, Catriona Kelly, Sarah Hudspith
Walter Benjamin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable philosopher and critic whose ideas, developed in the 1930s, became highly influential after his death while escaping the Holocaust.
10 February 2022
Featuring: Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger
Weber's The Protestant Ethic
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Max Weber's book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
27 March 2014
Featuring: Peter Ghosh, Sam Whimster, Linda Woodhead
Founders of philosophical traditions (18)
Al-Kindi
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Al-Kindi, often described as the first philosopher in the Arabic tradition.
28 June 2012
Featuring: Hugh Kennedy, James Montgomery, Amira Bennison
Averroes
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Averroes who worked to reconcile the theology of Islam with the rationality of Aristotle, achieving both fame and infamy.
5 October 2006
Featuring: Amira Bennison, Peter Adamson, Anthony Kenny
Avicenna
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Avicenna, among the most important philosophers in the history of Islam.
8 November 2007
Featuring: Peter Adamson, Amira Bennison, Nader El-Bizri
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Confucius
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosophy of Confucius, a body of ideas which, more than any other philosophy, has defined what it is to be Chinese.
1 November 2001
Featuring: Frances Wood, Tim Barrett, Tao Tao Liu
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Heraclitus
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the ancient Greek thinker Heraclitus, immortalised by later scholars as the Weeping Philosopher.
8 December 2011
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Peter Adamson, James Warren
Hobbes
Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.
1 December 2005
Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Kierkegaard
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.
20 March 2008
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
23 May 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene
Plato's Gorgias
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock
25 November 2021
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh
Pythagoras
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and influence of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans.
10 December 2009
Featuring: Ian Stewart, Serafina Cuomo, John O'Connor
Socrates
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.
27 September 2007
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett
Spinoza
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Spinoza whose profound and complex ideas about God had him celebrated as an atheist in the 18th century.
3 May 2007
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham
St Thomas Aquinas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss St Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic Church's foremost western philosopher and theologian.
17 September 2009
Featuring: Martin Palmer, John Haldane, Annabel Brett
The Buddha
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life of Siddhartha Gautama, the originator of Buddhism, and examines why his teachings have now become one of the fastest growing religions of the Western world.
14 March 2002
Featuring: Peter Harvey, Kate Crosby, Mahinda Deegalle
Wittgenstein
Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.
4 December 2003
Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn
British novels adapted into films (16)
A Christmas Carol
From Bah Humbug to God Bless Us Every One: Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Charles Dickens' story of Scrooge's salvation by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet To Come.
16 December 2021
Featuring: Juliet John, Jon Mee, Dinah Birch
Animal Farm
4 Extra Debut. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss George Orwell's Animal Farm, which he struggled to publish in WW2 as the USSR was an ally. From 2016.
29 September 2016
Featuring: Steven Connor, Mary Vincent, Robert Colls
Decline and Fall
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Evelyn Waugh's comic novel Decline and Fall, published when the author was 25.
21 February 2013
Featuring: David Bradshaw, John Bowen, Ann Pasternak Slater
Emma
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jane Austen's novel Emma, which features, according to Austen, 'a heroine whom no-one but myself will much like'.
19 November 2015
Featuring: Janet Todd, John Mullan, Emma Clery
Frankenstein
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Mary Shelley's story of Victor Frankenstein and the creature he makes from cadavers and then rejects - only for the monster to take his revenge
16 May 2019
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Michael Rossington, Jane Thomas
Heart of Darkness
Melvyn Bragg discusses Joseph Conrad's Novel, Heart of Darkness, a critique of colonialism at the turn of the century
15 February 2007
Featuring: Susan Jones, Robert Hampson, Laurence Davies
Jane Eyre
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, first published in 1847 under the pseudonym Currer Bell.
18 June 2015
Featuring: Dinah Birch, Karen O'Brien, Sara Lyons
Mrs Dalloway
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs Dalloway, published in 1925.
3 July 2014
Featuring: Hermione Lee, Jane Goldman, Kathryn Simpson
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Orwell's dystopian novel where the state rewrites history, war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength - and Big Brother is watching you
15 September 2022
Featuring: David Dwan, Lisa Mullen, John Bowen
Robinson Crusoe
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Daniel Defoe's seminal novel Robinson Crusoe. Published in 1719, it was an immediate success and is considered the classic adventure story.
22 December 2011
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Judith Hawley, Bob Owens
Silas Marner
Melvyn Bragg and guests Rosemary Ashton, Dinah Birch and Valentine Cunningham discuss George Eliot's 1861 novel Silas Marner.
28 January 2010
Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Dinah Birch, Valentine Cunningham
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, which challenged Victorian morality and made Hardy's fortune when published in the 1890s.
5 May 2016
Featuring: Dinah Birch, Francis O'Gorman, Jane Thomas
The Riddle of the Sands
Melvyn Bragg discusses the prescient thriller ‘The Riddle of the Sands’ and the decline Anglo-German relations before the First World War.
12 June 2008
Featuring: Richard J. Evans, Rosemary Ashton, T. C. W. Blanning
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Anne Bronte's story of the mysterious Helen Graham who seeks a new independent life as an artist after escaping her abusive, alcoholic husband.
30 September 2021
Featuring: Alexandra Lewis, Marianne Thormählen, John Bowen
The Time Machine
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and anxieties in late Victorian London, explored by HG Wells in his story of time travel, evolution and a planet unfit for humans.
17 October 2019
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Amanda Rees, Simon James
Wuthering Heights
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Emily Bronte's story of Heathcliff and Cathy, of love, hatred, revenge and self-destruction across two generations in a remote moorland home.
28 September 2017
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Bowen, Alexandra Lewis
Continental philosophers (15)
Bergson and Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.
9 May 2019
Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair
Camus
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Nobel Prize winning Algerian-French writer and existentialist philosopher Albert Camus.
3 January 2008
Featuring: Peter Dunwoodie, David Walker, Christina Howells
Hannah Arendt
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Hannah Arendt who examined totalitarianism and politics and, when covering the Eichmann trial, explored 'the banality of evil'.
2 February 2017
Featuring: Lyndsey Stonebridge, Frisbee Sheffield, Robert Eaglestone
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Kierkegaard
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.
20 March 2008
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
23 May 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene
Marx
Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.
14 July 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.
12 January 2017
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson
Sartre
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
7 October 2004
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
Simone Weil
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil. Admired by Albert Camus and Iris Murdoch, she achieved a great deal in her short life.
15 November 2012
Featuring: Beatrice Han-Pile, Stephen Plant, David Levy
Simone de Beauvoir
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.
22 October 2015
Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd
Walter Benjamin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable philosopher and critic whose ideas, developed in the 1930s, became highly influential after his death while escaping the Holocaust.
10 February 2022
Featuring: Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger
Weber's The Protestant Ethic
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Max Weber's book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
27 March 2014
Featuring: Peter Ghosh, Sam Whimster, Linda Woodhead
Philosophers of language (15)
Abelard and Heloise
Melvyn Bragg discusses the story of Abelard and Heloise, a medieval tale of literature and philosophy, love and scandal in the high Middle Ages.
5 May 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Henrietta Leyser, Michael Clanchy
Averroes
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Averroes who worked to reconcile the theology of Islam with the rationality of Aristotle, achieving both fame and infamy.
5 October 2006
Featuring: Amira Bennison, Peter Adamson, Anthony Kenny
Bergson and Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.
9 May 2019
Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Hobbes
Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.
1 December 2005
Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
23 May 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene
Mill
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.
18 May 2006
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan
Roger Bacon
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss medieval English scholar Roger Bacon, an early pioneer of science who became known as Doctor Mirabilis.
20 April 2017
Featuring: Jack Cunningham, Amanda Power, Elly Truitt
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
Seneca the Younger
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Seneca: philosopher, playwright, tutor to Nero, one of the first great writers born in the new Roman empire after the fall of the Republic.
23 February 2017
Featuring: Mary Beard, Catharine Edwards, Alessandro Schiesaro
Walter Benjamin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable philosopher and critic whose ideas, developed in the 1930s, became highly influential after his death while escaping the Holocaust.
10 February 2022
Featuring: Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger
Wittgenstein
Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.
4 December 2003
Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn
Philosophers of logic (15)
Al-Kindi
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Al-Kindi, often described as the first philosopher in the Arabic tradition.
28 June 2012
Featuring: Hugh Kennedy, James Montgomery, Amira Bennison
Averroes
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Averroes who worked to reconcile the theology of Islam with the rationality of Aristotle, achieving both fame and infamy.
5 October 2006
Featuring: Amira Bennison, Peter Adamson, Anthony Kenny
Avicenna
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Avicenna, among the most important philosophers in the history of Islam.
8 November 2007
Featuring: Peter Adamson, Amira Bennison, Nader El-Bizri
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
David Hume
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.
6 October 2011
Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris
Galen
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Roman physician and medical theorist Galen.
10 October 2013
Featuring: Vivian Nutton, Helen King, Caroline Petit
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Mill
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.
18 May 2006
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan
Montaigne
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Michel de Montaigne. Best known for his influential Essays, Montaigne is regarded as the father of modern sceptical thought.
25 April 2013
Featuring: David Wootton, Terence Cave, Felicity Green
Plato's Gorgias
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock
25 November 2021
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh
Popper
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.
8 February 2007
Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
Socrates
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.
27 September 2007
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett
Wittgenstein
Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.
4 December 2003
Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn
Aphorists (15)
Benjamin Franklin
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.
1 March 2012
Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara
Blaise Pascal
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the French polymath Blaise Pascal.
19 September 2013
Featuring: David Wootton, Michael Moriarty, Michela Massimi
Confucius
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosophy of Confucius, a body of ideas which, more than any other philosophy, has defined what it is to be Chinese.
1 November 2001
Featuring: Frances Wood, Tim Barrett, Tao Tao Liu
Jorge Luis Borges
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges.
4 January 2007
Featuring: Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn
Kafka's The Trial
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Franz Kafka's novel The Trial.
27 November 2014
Featuring: Elizabeth Boa, Steve Connor, Ritchie Robertson
Kierkegaard
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.
20 March 2008
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt
Montaigne
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Michel de Montaigne. Best known for his influential Essays, Montaigne is regarded as the father of modern sceptical thought.
25 April 2013
Featuring: David Wootton, Terence Cave, Felicity Green
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.
12 January 2017
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson
Oscar Wilde
Melvyn Bragg discusses Oscar Wilde, the Aesthetes and his literary legacy. Was Wilde a reactionary - the last of the romantics - or was he the midwife to modernism?
6 December 2001
Featuring: Valentine Cunningham, Regenia Gagnier, Neil Sammells
Plato's Gorgias
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock
25 November 2021
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh
Proust
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.
17 April 2003
Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser
Sartre
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
7 October 2004
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
Socrates
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.
27 September 2007
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett
Walter Benjamin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable philosopher and critic whose ideas, developed in the 1930s, became highly influential after his death while escaping the Holocaust.
10 February 2022
Featuring: Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (15)
Benjamin Franklin
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.
1 March 2012
Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara
Bergson and Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.
9 May 2019
Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Gauss, 'prince of mathematicians', including those on number theory, geometry, probability theory, astronomy and electromagnetism.
30 November 2017
Featuring: Marcus du Sautoy, Colva Roney-Dougal, Nick Evans
Dorothy Hodgkin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work, ideas and life of the woman who won the 1964 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her work on the structures of vitamin B12 and penicillin.
3 October 2019
Featuring: Georgina Ferry, Judith Howard, Patricia Fara
Hannah Arendt
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Hannah Arendt who examined totalitarianism and politics and, when covering the Eichmann trial, explored 'the banality of evil'.
2 February 2017
Featuring: Lyndsey Stonebridge, Frisbee Sheffield, Robert Eaglestone
Humboldt
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Prussian naturalist and explorer, Alexander Von Humboldt. A hero in South America; Charles Darwin described him as ‘the greatest scientific traveller who ever lived’.
28 September 2006
Featuring: Jason Wilson, Patricia Fara, Jim Secord
Iris Murdoch
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the growing prominence of the philosophy of one of the most celebrated novelists of the 20th century, who developed her ideas in response to WWII.
21 October 2021
Featuring: Anil Gomes, Anne Rowe, Miles Leeson
John Dalton
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss scientist John Dalton, who pioneered the development of atomic theory and carried out research into meteorology and colour blindness.
27 October 2016
Featuring: Jim Bennett, Aileen Fyfe, James Sumner
Michael Faraday
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Michael Faraday, the most famous British scientist of the 19th century.
25 December 2015
Featuring: Geoffrey Cantor, Laura Herz, Frank James
Mill
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.
18 May 2006
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan
Pierre-Simon Laplace
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great French mathematician who tackled questions on the stability of the Solar System and planet rotation and devised the basis for metrication
8 April 2021
Featuring: Marcus du Sautoy, Timothy Gowers, Colva Roney-Dougal
Samuel Beckett
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the author of Waiting for Godot, who lived in Paris and wrote in French as he found that more difficult than writing in English
17 January 2019
Featuring: Steven Connor, Laura Salisbury, Mark Nixon
Sartre
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
7 October 2004
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells
Washington and the American Revolution
Melvyn Bragg discusses the first President of the United States, George Washington, and the people and ideas that saw the American Revolution overthrow British rule in 1775.
24 June 2004
Featuring: Carol Berkin, Simon Middleton, Colin Bonwick
William and Caroline Herschel
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pioneering brother and sister who, between them, discovered Uranus, comets, double stars and infrared light at the end of the 18th century.
11 November 2021
Featuring: Monica Grady, Carolin Crawford, Jim Bennett
Critics of religions (15)
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
David Hume
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.
6 October 2011
Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris
Dickens
Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?
12 July 2001
Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen
Edward Gibbon
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the writer of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, one of the most celebrated works of its kind.
17 June 2021
Featuring: David Womersley, Charlotte Roberts, Karen O’Brien
Hobbes
Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.
1 December 2005
Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett
Lenin
Melvyn Bragg investigates what drove the Soviet leader Lenin, and enabled him to develop a model to export communism and build an original political system that remained intact for over seventy years.
16 March 2000
Featuring: Robert Service, Vitali Vitaliev
Marx
Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.
14 July 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.
12 January 2017
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson
Popper
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.
8 February 2007
Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright
Proust
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.
17 April 2003
Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser
Sartre
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
7 October 2004
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
Socrates
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.
27 September 2007
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett
Spinoza
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Spinoza whose profound and complex ideas about God had him celebrated as an atheist in the 18th century.
3 May 2007
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham
Thomas Paine's Common Sense
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.
21 January 2016
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson
Concepts in astronomy (14)
Black Holes
Melvyn Bragg discusses Black Holes, the dead collapsed ghosts of massive stars.
12 April 2001
Featuring: Martin Rees, Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Martin Ward
Comets
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss comets, the 'dirty snowballs' of the solar system which orbit the sun.
17 January 2013
Featuring: Monica Grady, Paul Murdin, Don Pollacco
Cosmic rays
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss cosmic rays, the mysterious high-energy particles that constantly bombard Earth.
16 May 2013
Featuring: Carolin Crawford, Alan Watson, Tim Greenshaw
Dark Energy
Melvyn Bragg discusses the recently discovered, and mysteriously named, 'dark energy' which may make up 70% of the universe.
17 March 2005
Featuring: Martin Rees, Carolin Crawford, Roger Penrose
Dark matter
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss dark matter, the mysterious and invisible substance that is believed to make up most of the universe.
12 March 2015
Featuring: Carolin Crawford, Gresham Professor of Astronomy Carlos Frenk, Anne Green
Eclipses
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the progress in our understanding of eclipses from the ancient world onwards and how their predictability illuminates historical records and myths.
31 December 2020
Featuring: Carolin Crawford, Frank Close, Lucie Green
Exoplanets
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss exoplanets, planets detected outside our solar system.
3 October 2013
Featuring: Carolin Crawford, Don Pollacco, Suzanne Aigrain
Galaxies
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the galaxies; spread out across the void of space like spun sugar, but harbouring in their centres super-massive black holes.
29 June 2006
Featuring: John Gribbin, Carolin Crawford, Robert Kennicutt
Gravitational Waves
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Gravitational Waves, mysterious phenomena that ripple the fabric of space-time.
17 May 2007
Featuring: Jim Al-Khalili, Carolin Crawford, Sheila Rowan
The Age of the Universe
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss a question which has obsessed cosmologists for millennia: how old is the Universe?
3 March 2011
Featuring: Martin Rees, Carolin Crawford, Carlos Frenk
The Death of Stars
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how so much in the Universe, and much of our understanding of it, depends on changes in stars as they die after millions or billions of stable years
9 June 2022
Featuring: Martin Rees, Carolin Crawford, Mark Sullivan
The Life of Stars
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life cycle of stars. They are born among vast swirls of gas and dust and they die in stunning explosions.
27 Mar 2003
Featuring: Paul Murdin, Janna Levin, Phil Charles
The Planets
Melvyn Bragg discusses our knowledge of the planets in both our and other solar systems. What causes them to form and what is the likelihood of there being another with properties similar to Earth’s?
27 May 2004
Featuring: Paul Murdin, Hugh Jones, Carolin Crawford
The Universe's Origins
Melvyn Bragg examines the way thinking about the origins of the universe changed in the 20th century. Are we any closer to knowing whether other worlds exist and how our planet came into being?
20 May 1999
Featuring: Martin Rees, Paul Davies
Metaphilosophers (14)
Bergson and Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.
9 May 2019
Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
David Hume
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.
6 October 2011
Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Kierkegaard
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.
20 March 2008
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
23 May 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene
Montaigne
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Michel de Montaigne. Best known for his influential Essays, Montaigne is regarded as the father of modern sceptical thought.
25 April 2013
Featuring: David Wootton, Terence Cave, Felicity Green
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.
12 January 2017
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson
Pythagoras
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and influence of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans.
10 December 2009
Featuring: Ian Stewart, Serafina Cuomo, John O'Connor
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
Socrates
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.
27 September 2007
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett
Spinoza
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Spinoza whose profound and complex ideas about God had him celebrated as an atheist in the 18th century.
3 May 2007
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham
Wittgenstein
Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.
4 December 2003
Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn
Philosophers of social science (14)
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
David Hume
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.
6 October 2011
Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
23 May 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene
Montaigne
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Michel de Montaigne. Best known for his influential Essays, Montaigne is regarded as the father of modern sceptical thought.
25 April 2013
Featuring: David Wootton, Terence Cave, Felicity Green
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.
12 January 2017
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson
Peter Kropotkin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the Russian prince who became an anarchist and who argued that mutual aid was the key to evolution not survival of the fittest
24 February 2022
Featuring: Ruth Kinna, Lee Dugatkin, Simon Dixon
Seneca the Younger
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Seneca: philosopher, playwright, tutor to Nero, one of the first great writers born in the new Roman empire after the fall of the Republic.
23 February 2017
Featuring: Mary Beard, Catharine Edwards, Alessandro Schiesaro
Simone Weil
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil. Admired by Albert Camus and Iris Murdoch, she achieved a great deal in her short life.
15 November 2012
Featuring: Beatrice Han-Pile, Stephen Plant, David Levy
Sun Tzu and The Art of War
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Chinese military adviser Sun Tzu from the 6th century BC and the influential work of military strategy associated with him, The Art of War.
1 March 2018
Featuring: Hilde de Weerdt, Tim Barrett, Imre Galambos
Walter Benjamin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable philosopher and critic whose ideas, developed in the 1930s, became highly influential after his death while escaping the Holocaust.
10 February 2022
Featuring: Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger
Wittgenstein
Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.
4 December 2003
Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn
English male poets (14)
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aldous Huxley's dystopian 1932 novel Brave New World and its vision of a future of test tube babies, free love and round-the-clock surveillance.
9 April 2009
Featuring: David Bradshaw, Daniel Pick, Michèle Barrett
Auden
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss WH Auden's life and poetry from Europe before WWII, reflecting on his travels to Spain, China and Germany and the rise of totalitarianism.
19 December 2019
Featuring: Mark Ford, Janet Montefiore, Jeremy Noel-Tod
Dickens
Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?
12 July 2001
Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the works of Hopkins, unpublished in his lifetime, who FR Leavis called 'the only influential poet of the Victorian age and the greatest'.
21 March 2019
Featuring: Catherine Phillips, Jane Wright, Martin Dubois
John Clare
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss John Clare, the 'Northamptonshire peasant poet', whose writing was as celebrated as his life was humble.
9 February 2017
Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Mina Gorji, Simon Kövesi
Johnson
Melvyn Bragg discusses Samuel Johnson, a giant of 18th century literature, language and letters, and perhaps the most quotable Englishman to have ever lifted a pen.
27 October 2005
Featuring: John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Judith Hawley
Marlowe
Melvyn Bragg discusses Christopher Marlowe; a forger, a brawler, a spy, but above all a playwright, a poet and the most celebrated writer of his generation.
7 July 2005
Featuring: Katherine Duncan-Jones, Jonathan Bate, Emma J. Smith
Milton
Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.
7 March 2002
Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden
Pope
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the satirist Alexander Pope. One of the greatest poets of the English language, his brilliant satires have made him popular in our age but not in his own.
9 November 2006
Featuring: John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Valerie Rumbold
Shakespeare and Literary Criticism
Melvyn Bragg discusses the enduring popular and academic appeal of Shakespeare and examines whether literary criticism and the academic institution ruins the pleasure of reading.
4 March 1999
Featuring: Harold Bloom, Jacqueline Rose
Shakespeare's Life
Melvyn Bragg discusses what we know about the life of William Shakespeare, a tantalising conundrum that has exercised minds since the day the playwright died.
15 March 2001
Featuring: Katherine Duncan-Jones, John Sutherland, Grace Ioppolo
Shakespeare's Work
Melvyn Bragg discusses whether the work of William Shakespeare is 'not of an age but for all time' or increasingly irrelevant museum pieces embalmed in out of reach language.
11 May 2000
Featuring: Frank Kermode, Michael Bogdanov, Germaine Greer
Swift's A Modest Proposal
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jonathan Swift's satirical 1729 pamphlet A Modest Proposal, which reveals much about attitudes to the Irish and the poor in 18th-Century Britain.
29 January 2009
Featuring: John Mullan, Judith Hawley, Ian McBride
The Scriblerus Club
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Scriblerus Club which included some of the sharpest satirists of the 18th century.
9 June 2005
Featuring: John Mullan, Judith Hawley, Marcus Walsh
Novels adapted into operas (13)
A Christmas Carol
From Bah Humbug to God Bless Us Every One: Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Charles Dickens' story of Scrooge's salvation by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet To Come.
16 December 2021
Featuring: Juliet John, Jon Mee, Dinah Birch
Don Quixote
Melvyn Bragg discusses the importance, originality and enduring appeal of Cervantes’ classic 17th century Spanish novel Don Quixote, a cornerstone of Western literature.
16 March 2006
Featuring: Barry Ife, Edwin Williamson, Jane Whetnall
Eugene Onegin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837), often described as his masterpiece, which tells the tragic story of Onegin, Lensky and Tatyana.
22 June 2017
Featuring: Andrew Kahn, Emily Finer, Simon Dixon
Great Gatsby
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the great American novels of the 20th Century, where inexplicably rich Jay Gatsby aims to win Daisy Buchanan from her millionaire husband.
14 January 2021
Featuring: Sarah Churchwell, Philip McGowan, William Blazek
Journey to the West
Melvyn Bragg discusses the much loved Chinese novel from 1592, featuring Monkey, Tripitaka, Sandy and Pigsy, as they travel to India to bring back Buddhist texts.
20 May 2021
Featuring: Julia Lovell, Chiung-yun Evelyn Liu, Craig Clunas
Madame Bovary
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the literary sensation caused by the trial for indecency of Gustave Flaubert's novel Madame Bovary.
12 July 2007
Featuring: Andy Martin, Mary Orr, Robert Gildea
Moby Dick
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Moby-Dick (1851) by Herman Melville, the story of Ahab and the white whale, the most popular of around 1,000 ideas that listeners submitted.
7 December 2017
Featuring: Bridget Bennett, Katie McGettigan, Graham Thompson
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Orwell's dystopian novel where the state rewrites history, war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength - and Big Brother is watching you
15 September 2022
Featuring: David Dwan, Lisa Mullen, John Bowen
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, which challenged Victorian morality and made Hardy's fortune when published in the 1890s.
5 May 2016
Featuring: Dinah Birch, Francis O'Gorman, Jane Thomas
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Anne Bronte's story of the mysterious Helen Graham who seeks a new independent life as an artist after escaping her abusive, alcoholic husband.
30 September 2021
Featuring: Alexandra Lewis, Marianne Thormählen, John Bowen
Tristram Shandy
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Laurence Sterne's comic novel Tristram Shandy.
24 April 2014
Featuring: Judith Hawley, John Mullan, Mary Newbould
Voltaire's Candide
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Voltaire's satirical novel Candide, first published in 1759.
3 May 2012
Featuring: David Wootton, Nicholas Cronk, Caroline Warman
Wuthering Heights
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Emily Bronte's story of Heathcliff and Cathy, of love, hatred, revenge and self-destruction across two generations in a remote moorland home.
28 September 2017
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Bowen, Alexandra Lewis
19th-century essayists (13)
Bergson and Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.
9 May 2019
Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Dickens
Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?
12 July 2001
Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Kierkegaard
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.
20 March 2008
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt
Mill
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.
18 May 2006
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan
Peter Kropotkin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the Russian prince who became an anarchist and who argued that mutual aid was the key to evolution not survival of the fittest
24 February 2022
Featuring: Ruth Kinna, Lee Dugatkin, Simon Dixon
Proust
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.
17 April 2003
Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
Tolstoy
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and times of the 19th century Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, whose novels such as War and Peace gave expression to the compelling moral and social questions of their day.
25 April 2002
Featuring: A. N. Wilson, Catriona Kelly, Sarah Hudspith
Philosophers of law (13)
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Confucius
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosophy of Confucius, a body of ideas which, more than any other philosophy, has defined what it is to be Chinese.
1 November 2001
Featuring: Frances Wood, Tim Barrett, Tao Tao Liu
Hannah Arendt
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Hannah Arendt who examined totalitarianism and politics and, when covering the Eichmann trial, explored 'the banality of evil'.
2 February 2017
Featuring: Lyndsey Stonebridge, Frisbee Sheffield, Robert Eaglestone
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Hobbes
Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.
1 December 2005
Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Marcus Aurelius
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, meditations and reputation of this stoic and philosopher king, who Machiavelli called the last of the 'Five Good Emperors'.
25 February 2021
Featuring: Simon Goldhill, Angie Hobbs, Catharine Edwards
Marx
Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.
14 July 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones
Montesquieu
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of the French political philosopher (1689-1755) whose work on liberty and republicanism, banned at home, influenced the US constitution.
14 June 2018
Featuring: Richard Bourke, Rachel Hammersley, Richard Whatmore
Plato's Gorgias
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock
25 November 2021
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh
Socrates
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.
27 September 2007
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett
St Thomas Aquinas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss St Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic Church's foremost western philosopher and theologian.
17 September 2009
Featuring: Martin Palmer, John Haldane, Annabel Brett
Tocqueville: Democracy in America
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alexis de Tocqueville and his study of the American democratic system, written as an example to France of how democracy might develop there.
22 March 2018
Featuring: Robert Gildea, Susan-Mary Grant, Jeremy Jennings
20th-century essayists (13)
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aldous Huxley's dystopian 1932 novel Brave New World and its vision of a future of test tube babies, free love and round-the-clock surveillance.
9 April 2009
Featuring: David Bradshaw, Daniel Pick, Michèle Barrett
Bergson and Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.
9 May 2019
Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Fernando Pessoa
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the works and life of one of Portugal's greatest poets, who wrote in his own name and in those of several rounded characters he created.
3 December 2020
Featuring: Cláudia Pazos-Alonso, Juliet Perkins, Paulo de Medeiros
Jorge Luis Borges
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges.
4 January 2007
Featuring: Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
23 May 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene
Peter Kropotkin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the Russian prince who became an anarchist and who argued that mutual aid was the key to evolution not survival of the fittest
24 February 2022
Featuring: Ruth Kinna, Lee Dugatkin, Simon Dixon
Popper
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.
8 February 2007
Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright
Proust
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.
17 April 2003
Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser
Samuel Beckett
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the author of Waiting for Godot, who lived in Paris and wrote in French as he found that more difficult than writing in English
17 January 2019
Featuring: Steven Connor, Laura Salisbury, Mark Nixon
Tolstoy
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and times of the 19th century Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, whose novels such as War and Peace gave expression to the compelling moral and social questions of their day.
25 April 2002
Featuring: A. N. Wilson, Catriona Kelly, Sarah Hudspith
Walter Benjamin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable philosopher and critic whose ideas, developed in the 1930s, became highly influential after his death while escaping the Holocaust.
10 February 2022
Featuring: Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger
Wittgenstein
Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.
4 December 2003
Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn
English essayists (13)
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aldous Huxley's dystopian 1932 novel Brave New World and its vision of a future of test tube babies, free love and round-the-clock surveillance.
9 April 2009
Featuring: David Bradshaw, Daniel Pick, Michèle Barrett
Auden
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss WH Auden's life and poetry from Europe before WWII, reflecting on his travels to Spain, China and Germany and the rise of totalitarianism.
19 December 2019
Featuring: Mark Ford, Janet Montefiore, Jeremy Noel-Tod
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Dickens
Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?
12 July 2001
Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen
Edward Gibbon
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the writer of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, one of the most celebrated works of its kind.
17 June 2021
Featuring: David Womersley, Charlotte Roberts, Karen O’Brien
Fanny Burney
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the 18th-century writer Fanny Burney, also known as Frances D'Arblay and Frances Burney, best known for her novel Evelina.
23 April 2015
Featuring: Nicole Pohl, Judith Hawley, John Mullan
John Ruskin
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and work of John Ruskin, art and social critic, and one of the most influential figures of the Victorian era.
31 March 2005
Featuring: Dinah Birch, Keith Hanley, Stefan Collini
Johnson
Melvyn Bragg discusses Samuel Johnson, a giant of 18th century literature, language and letters, and perhaps the most quotable Englishman to have ever lifted a pen.
27 October 2005
Featuring: John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Judith Hawley
Mary Wollstonecraft
Melvyn Bragg and guests John Mullan, Karen O'Brien and Barbara Taylor discuss the life and ideas of the pioneering British Enlightenment thinker Mary Wollstonecraft.
31 December 2009
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Mullan, Barbara Taylor
Mill
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.
18 May 2006
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan
Milton
Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.
7 March 2002
Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden
Pope
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the satirist Alexander Pope. One of the greatest poets of the English language, his brilliant satires have made him popular in our age but not in his own.
9 November 2006
Featuring: John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Valerie Rumbold
William Hazlitt
Melvyn Bragg and guests Jonathan Bate, Uttara Natarajan and AC Grayling discuss the life and works of William Hazlitt.
8 April 2010
Featuring: Jonathan Bate, A. C. Grayling, Uttara Natarajan
Writers about religion and science (13)
Benjamin Franklin
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.
1 March 2012
Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara
Bergson and Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.
9 May 2019
Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
David Hume
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.
6 October 2011
Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
23 May 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene
Marx
Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.
14 July 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones
Michael Faraday
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Michael Faraday, the most famous British scientist of the 19th century.
25 December 2015
Featuring: Geoffrey Cantor, Laura Herz, Frank James
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.
12 January 2017
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson
Popper
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.
8 February 2007
Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright
Pythagoras
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and influence of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans.
10 December 2009
Featuring: Ian Stewart, Serafina Cuomo, John O'Connor
Robert Boyle
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Robert Boyle, a pioneering scientist and one of the first Fellows of the Royal Society.
12 June 2014
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Michael Hunter, Anna Marie Roos
St Thomas Aquinas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss St Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic Church's foremost western philosopher and theologian.
17 September 2009
Featuring: Martin Palmer, John Haldane, Annabel Brett
Concepts in metaphysics (13)
Cogito Ergo Sum
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss one of the most famous statements in philosophy, 'Cogito ergo sum', Rene Descartes' attempt to establish what we can truly know.
28 April 2011
Featuring: Susan James, John Cottingham, Stephen Mulhall
Consciousness
Melvyn Bragg examines why the elusiveness and impenetrability of consciousness continues to fascinate both philosophers and scientists. Is the human mind just not built to understand its own basis?
25 November 1999
Featuring: Ted Honderich, Roger Penrose
Free Will(500th programme)
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the problem of free will - the extent to which we are able to choose our actions.
10 March 2011
Featuring: Simon Blackburn, Helen Beebee, Galen Strawson
Ockham's Razor
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosophical idea of Ockham’s Razor and the medieval philosopher who gave his name to it, William of Ockham.
31 May 2007
Featuring: Anthony Kenny, Marilyn Adams, Richard Alan Cross
Perception and the Senses
Melvyn Bragg discusses perception: how the brain reacts to the mass of data continually crowding it and examines what governs our perception of the world.
28 April 2005
Featuring: Richard Gregory, David Moore, Gemma Calvert
Progress
Melvyn Bragg examines whether while mankind has grown in years and knowledge, it has also progressed in terms of happiness and a truer understanding of the human condition.
18 November 1999
Featuring: Anthony O'Hear, Adam Phillips
The Brain and Consciousness
Melvyn Bragg discusses how our increased knowledge of the functioning of the brain has changed our feelings about our own natures, and our approach to the behaviour and treatment of others.
19 November 1998
Featuring: Steven Rose, Dan Robinson
The Mind/Body Problem
Melvyn Bragg discusses the history of thought about the mind/body problem in philosophy. Does the mind rule the body or the body rule the mind? And where does the mind reside?
13 January 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Julian Baggini, Sue James
The Music of the Spheres
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the music of the spheres, the idea that the revolution of the planets generates a celestial harmony of profound beauty
19 June 2008
Featuring: Peter Forshaw, Jim Bennett, Angela Voss
The Soul
Melvyn Bragg discusses the spectrum of ideas about the soul, the extent of human individuality, and the history of thought concerning immortality and the afterlife.
6 June 2002
Featuring: Richard Sorabji, Ruth Padel, Martin Palmer
The Sublime
Melvyn Bragg discusses a transcendental idea that 18th century British artists, poets, philosophers and scientists seized upon and adapted to the intellectual and physical landscape.
12 February 2004
Featuring: Janet Todd, Annie Janowitz, Peter de Bolla
Time
Melvyn Bragg examines the history of mankind’s attempt to understand the nature of time. Does it exist independently of our perception of it, or is it merely a figment of our imagination?
30 December 1999
Featuring: Neil Johnson, Lee Smolin
Truth
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss philosophical approaches to truth.
18 December 2014
Featuring: Simon Blackburn, Jennifer Hornsby, Crispin Wright
British novels adapted into television shows (12)
A Christmas Carol
From Bah Humbug to God Bless Us Every One: Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Charles Dickens' story of Scrooge's salvation by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet To Come.
16 December 2021
Featuring: Juliet John, Jon Mee, Dinah Birch
Animal Farm
4 Extra Debut. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss George Orwell's Animal Farm, which he struggled to publish in WW2 as the USSR was an ally. From 2016.
29 September 2016
Featuring: Steven Connor, Mary Vincent, Robert Colls
Emma
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jane Austen's novel Emma, which features, according to Austen, 'a heroine whom no-one but myself will much like'.
19 November 2015
Featuring: Janet Todd, John Mullan, Emma Clery
Frankenstein
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Mary Shelley's story of Victor Frankenstein and the creature he makes from cadavers and then rejects - only for the monster to take his revenge
16 May 2019
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Michael Rossington, Jane Thomas
Heart of Darkness
Melvyn Bragg discusses Joseph Conrad's Novel, Heart of Darkness, a critique of colonialism at the turn of the century
15 February 2007
Featuring: Susan Jones, Robert Hampson, Laurence Davies
Jane Eyre
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, first published in 1847 under the pseudonym Currer Bell.
18 June 2015
Featuring: Dinah Birch, Karen O'Brien, Sara Lyons
Middlemarch
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss George Eliot's Study of Provincial Life, set before the Reform Act 1832 in a small, fictional town in the Midlands surrounded by farmland.
18 April 2018
Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Kathryn Hughes, John Bowen
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Orwell's dystopian novel where the state rewrites history, war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength - and Big Brother is watching you
15 September 2022
Featuring: David Dwan, Lisa Mullen, John Bowen
Robinson Crusoe
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Daniel Defoe's seminal novel Robinson Crusoe. Published in 1719, it was an immediate success and is considered the classic adventure story.
22 December 2011
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Judith Hawley, Bob Owens
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, which challenged Victorian morality and made Hardy's fortune when published in the 1890s.
5 May 2016
Featuring: Dinah Birch, Francis O'Gorman, Jane Thomas
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Anne Bronte's story of the mysterious Helen Graham who seeks a new independent life as an artist after escaping her abusive, alcoholic husband.
30 September 2021
Featuring: Alexandra Lewis, Marianne Thormählen, John Bowen
Wuthering Heights
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Emily Bronte's story of Heathcliff and Cathy, of love, hatred, revenge and self-destruction across two generations in a remote moorland home.
28 September 2017
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Bowen, Alexandra Lewis
Philosophers of psychology (12)
Al-Kindi
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Al-Kindi, often described as the first philosopher in the Arabic tradition.
28 June 2012
Featuring: Hugh Kennedy, James Montgomery, Amira Bennison
Averroes
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Averroes who worked to reconcile the theology of Islam with the rationality of Aristotle, achieving both fame and infamy.
5 October 2006
Featuring: Amira Bennison, Peter Adamson, Anthony Kenny
Avicenna
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Avicenna, among the most important philosophers in the history of Islam.
8 November 2007
Featuring: Peter Adamson, Amira Bennison, Nader El-Bizri
Bergson and Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.
9 May 2019
Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair
David Hume
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.
6 October 2011
Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris
Galen
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Roman physician and medical theorist Galen.
10 October 2013
Featuring: Vivian Nutton, Helen King, Caroline Petit
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Kierkegaard
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.
20 March 2008
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt
Mill
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.
18 May 2006
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan
Montaigne
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Michel de Montaigne. Best known for his influential Essays, Montaigne is regarded as the father of modern sceptical thought.
25 April 2013
Featuring: David Wootton, Terence Cave, Felicity Green
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.
12 January 2017
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
Romanticism (12)
1848: Year of Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss 1848, the year that saw Europe engulfed in revolution. Governments from Paris to Palermo were toppled, but the effects were not to last.
19 January 2012
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Lucy Riall, Mike Rapport
Bohemianism
Melvyn Bragg discusses how a 19th century Parisian artistic philosophy re-emerged in the 20th century in the drawing rooms of Bloomsbury and Chelsea, as a lifestyle choice for a middle-class clique.
9 October 2003
Featuring: Hermione Lee, Virginia Nicholson, Graham Robb
Frankenstein
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Mary Shelley's story of Victor Frankenstein and the creature he makes from cadavers and then rejects - only for the monster to take his revenge
16 May 2019
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Michael Rossington, Jane Thomas
Germaine de Staël
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas, works and life of Germaine de Stael (1766-1817), a literary critic, author, opponent of Napoleon and developer of Romanticism.
16 November 2017
Featuring: Catriona Seth, Alison Finch, Katherine Astbury
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Rousseau on Education
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rousseau's ideas on how to educate children so they retain their natural selves and are not corrupted by society.
10 October 2019
Featuring: Richard Whatmore, Caroline Warman, Denis McManus
Sturm und Drang
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the 18th-century German artistic movement known as Sturm und Drang, whose best-known exponents included Goethe and Schiller.
14 October 2010
Featuring: T. C. W. Blanning, Susanne Kord, Maike Oergel
The Brothers Grimm
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm and what they can tell us about the German imagination and 19th-century romantic nationalism.
5 February 2009
Featuring: Juliette Wood, Marina Warner, Tony Phelan
The Later Romantics
Melvyn Bragg discusses the poetry and idealism of Byron, Shelley and Keats, who all had unconventional lifestyles, strong affinities with southern Europe and classical Greece, and who all died young.
15 April 2004
Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Robert Woof, Jennifer Wallace
The Romantics
Melvyn Bragg discusses the ideals and legacy of Romanticism, a literary and artistic movement at the turn of the 19th century which gave rise to the great poetry of Wordsworth, Shelley and Keats.
12 October 2000
Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Rosemary Ashton, Nicholas Roe
The Sublime
Melvyn Bragg discusses a transcendental idea that 18th century British artists, poets, philosophers and scientists seized upon and adapted to the intellectual and physical landscape.
12 February 2004
Featuring: Janet Todd, Annie Janowitz, Peter de Bolla
Wagner
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life, and legacy of the German composer Richard Wagner, mentor of Nietzsche and disciple of Schopenhauer, who changed the face of 19th century opera.
20 June 2002
Featuring: John Deathridge, Lucy Beckett, Michael Tanner
Christian terminology (12)
Arianism
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss a widely shared form of Christianity, followed in the Roman empire and by the Goths across its borders, that became an infamous heresy.
15 April 2021
Featuring: Judith Herrin, Robin Whelan, Martin Palmer
Baltic Crusades
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the fight, led by orders such as the Teutonic Knights and supported by the popes, to convert pagans in what became known as the Baltic Crusades.
24 November 2016
Featuring: Aleks Pluskowski, Nora Berend, Martin Palmer
Early Christian Martyrdom
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the lives of martyrs in the first three centuries of Christianity and how Eusebius presented their stories once the Roman Empire became Christian.
28 April 2022
Featuring: Candida Moss, Kate Cooper, James Corke-Webster
Paganism in the Renaissance
Melvyn Bragg discusses paganism in the Renaissance and the return of classical pagan thought to Italy and then to the rest of Europe in the 15th century.
16 June 2005
Featuring: Thomas Healy, Charles Hope, Evelyn Welch
Purgatory
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of Purgatory as an idea and, from C12th, as a place imagined alongside Heaven and Hell where souls of sinners would be purged by fire.
25 May 2017
Featuring: Laura Ashe, Matthew Treherne, Helen Foxhall Forbes
The Fall
Melvyn Bragg discusses the idea of original sin and its impact on politics, gender and notions of morality in western culture, examining Augustine, Milton, the Masaccio frescoes and Charles Darwin.
8 April 2004
Featuring: Martin Palmer, Griselda Pollock, John Carey
The Holy Grail
Melvyn Bragg discusses the sacred allure of the Holy Grail which has fascinated writers for a thousand years.
15 May 2003
Featuring: Carolyne Larrington, Jonathan Riley-Smith, Juliette Wood
The Nicene Creed
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Nicene Creed, a statement of essential faith that established the Divinity of Christ and has been spoken for over 1600 years in Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Churches
27 December 2007
Featuring: Martin Palmer, Caroline Humfress, Andrew Louth
The Pelagian Controversy
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Pelagian Controversy, one of the most significant doctrinal disputes of the early church.
21 April 2011
Featuring: Martin Palmer, Caroline Humfress, John Milbank
The Rapture
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the impact of the idea developed by John Nelson Darby that believers will vanish suddenly, 'to meet the Lord in the air' before the Second Coming
26 September 2019
Featuring: Elizabeth Phillips, Crawford Gribben, Nicholas Guyatt
The Schism
Melvyn Bragg discusses events surrounding the 11th century division of medieval Christendom into what became the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church.
16 October 2003
Featuring: Henrietta Leyser, Norman Housley, Jonathan Shepard
The Trinity
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the doctrine of the Trinity, the idea of a threefold God, which lies at the heart of Christianity.
13 March 2014
Featuring: Janet Soskice, Martin Palmer, The Reverend Graham Ward
Burials at Westminster Abbey (12)
Aphra Behn
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Aphra Behn, known for her plays for the Restoration stage such as The Rover and for her novel Oroonoko.
12 October 2017
Featuring: Janet Todd, Ros Ballaster, Claire Bowditch
Chaucer
Melvyn Bragg discusses Geoffrey Chaucer who immortalised the medieval pilgrimage and the diversity of 14th century English society, in his Canterbury Tales.
9 February 2006
Featuring: Carolyne Larrington, Helen Cooper, Ardis Butterfield
Darwin: On the Origins of Charles Darwin
Melvyn Bragg presents a series about the life and work of Charles Darwin. Darwin's early life and time at Cambridge, where his interests shifted from religion to natural science.
5 January 2009
Featuring: Jim Moore, Steve Jones, David Norman, Colin Higgins
Dickens
Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?
12 July 2001
Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen
Johnson
Melvyn Bragg discusses Samuel Johnson, a giant of 18th century literature, language and letters, and perhaps the most quotable Englishman to have ever lifted a pen.
27 October 2005
Featuring: John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Judith Hawley
Mary, Queen of Scots
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, who might have united the French, English and Scottish thrones.
19 January 2017
Featuring: David Forsyth, Anna Groundwater, John Guy
Milton
Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.
7 March 2002
Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden
Rudyard Kipling
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Rudyard Kipling, a writer sometimes described as the poet of empire.
16 October 2014
Featuring: Howard Booth, Daniel Karlin, Jan Montefiore
Rutherford
Melvyn Bragg discusses Ernest Rutherford. He is seen as the father of nuclear science, a great charismatic figure who mapped the landscape of the sub-atomic world.
19 February 2004
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Jim Al-Khalili, Patricia Fara
The Death of Elizabeth I
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the death of Queen Elizabeth I and its immediate impact, as a foreign monarch became King in the face of plots and plague.
15 October 2009
Featuring: John Guy, Clare Jackson, Helen Hackett
Thomas Hardy's Poetry
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hardy's poems, which he prized far above the novels which made him famous and rich, and his ambition to be ranked alongside Shelley and Byron.
13 January 2022
Featuring: Mark Ford, Jane Thomas, Tim Armstrong
Wilberforce
In an unusual edition of In Our Time, marking the 1807 Abolition of the Slave Trade, Melvyn Bragg leaves the studio to examine the life of William Wilberforce.
22 February 2007
Featuring
Recipients of the Copley Medal (12)
Alfred Russel Wallace
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Victorian pioneer of evolutionary theory Alfred Russel Wallace.
21 March 2013
Featuring: Steve Jones, George Beccaloni, Ted Benton
Benjamin Franklin
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.
1 March 2012
Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Gauss, 'prince of mathematicians', including those on number theory, geometry, probability theory, astronomy and electromagnetism.
30 November 2017
Featuring: Marcus du Sautoy, Colva Roney-Dougal, Nick Evans
Darwin: On the Origins of Charles Darwin
Melvyn Bragg presents a series about the life and work of Charles Darwin. Darwin's early life and time at Cambridge, where his interests shifted from religion to natural science.
5 January 2009
Featuring: Jim Moore, Steve Jones, David Norman, Colin Higgins
Dorothy Hodgkin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work, ideas and life of the woman who won the 1964 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her work on the structures of vitamin B12 and penicillin.
3 October 2019
Featuring: Georgina Ferry, Judith Howard, Patricia Fara
Humboldt
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Prussian naturalist and explorer, Alexander Von Humboldt. A hero in South America; Charles Darwin described him as ‘the greatest scientific traveller who ever lived’.
28 September 2006
Featuring: Jason Wilson, Patricia Fara, Jim Secord
Louis Pasteur
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Louis Pasteur, microbiologist, developer of vaccines, saviour of the French beer and wine industries and preserver of milk.
18 May 2017
Featuring: Andrew Mendelsohn, Anne Hardy, Michael Worboys
Michael Faraday
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Michael Faraday, the most famous British scientist of the 19th century.
25 December 2015
Featuring: Geoffrey Cantor, Laura Herz, Frank James
Paul Dirac
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Bristolian theoretical physicist, ranked alongside Einstein by his peers, who won a Nobel for his work on quantum mechanics.
5 March 2020
Featuring: Graham Farmelo, Valerie Gibson, David Berman
Rutherford
Melvyn Bragg discusses Ernest Rutherford. He is seen as the father of nuclear science, a great charismatic figure who mapped the landscape of the sub-atomic world.
19 February 2004
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Jim Al-Khalili, Patricia Fara
Voyages of James Cook
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the science behind Capt James Cook's three voyages of discovery, from 1768 to 1779, one of over a thousand ideas suggested by listeners.
3 December 2015
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Rebekah Higgitt, Sophie Forgan
William and Caroline Herschel
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pioneering brother and sister who, between them, discovered Uranus, comets, double stars and infrared light at the end of the 18th century.
11 November 2021
Featuring: Monica Grady, Carolin Crawford, Jim Bennett
Age of Enlightenment (11)
Benjamin Franklin
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.
1 March 2012
Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara
Frederick the Great
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Frederick II, king of Prussia from 1740 to 1786.
2 July 2015
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Katrin Kohl, Thomas Biskup
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Ludwig van Beethoven
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rise of Beethoven, from Bonn to Vienna, where he became one of the great composers, despite his growing deafness.
21 December 2017
Featuring: Laura Tunbridge, John Deathridge, Erica Buurman
Robert Hooke
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Robert Hooke, the 17th-century scientist with a wide variety of interests from elasticity to microscopes who fell out with Newton.
18 February 2016
Featuring: David Wootton, Patricia Fara, Rob Iliffe
Rousseau on Education
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rousseau's ideas on how to educate children so they retain their natural selves and are not corrupted by society.
10 October 2019
Featuring: Richard Whatmore, Caroline Warman, Denis McManus
Spinoza
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Spinoza whose profound and complex ideas about God had him celebrated as an atheist in the 18th century.
3 May 2007
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham
The Encyclopédie
Melvyn Bragg discusses the French encyclopédie, one of the great achievements of the Enlightenment with contributors such as Voltaire, Rousseau, D’Alembert and Dennis Diderot.
26 October 2006
Featuring: Judith Hawley, Caroline Warman, David Wootton
The Enlightenment in Britain
Melvyn Bragg examines the part British thinkers played in the Enlightenment in the 18th century, and examines whether the shifts of thought in those years provided the platform for the modern world.
18 January 2001
Featuring: Roy Porter, Linda Colley, Jeremy Black
The Scottish Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg discusses the emergence and impact of the Scottish Enlightenment which was led by the philosopher David Hume and the father of modern economics, Adam Smith.
5 December 2002
Featuring: Tom Devine, Karen O'Brien, Alexander Broadie
Women and Enlightenment Science
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the role played by women in Enlightenment science.
4 November 2010
Featuring: Patricia Fara, Karen O'Brien, Judith Hawley
Enlightenment philosophers (11)
Bishop Berkeley
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the philosopher George Berkeley, one of the most significant thinkers of the 18th century.
20 March 2014
Featuring: Peter Millican, Tom Stoneham, Michela Massimi
David Hume
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.
6 October 2011
Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Mary Wollstonecraft
Melvyn Bragg and guests John Mullan, Karen O'Brien and Barbara Taylor discuss the life and ideas of the pioneering British Enlightenment thinker Mary Wollstonecraft.
31 December 2009
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Mullan, Barbara Taylor
Montesquieu
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of the French political philosopher (1689-1755) whose work on liberty and republicanism, banned at home, influenced the US constitution.
14 June 2018
Featuring: Richard Bourke, Rachel Hammersley, Richard Whatmore
Moses Mendelssohn
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of Moses Mendelssohn, one of the greatest thinkers of the German Enlightenment.
22 March 2012
Featuring: Christopher Clark, Abigail Green, Adam Sutcliffe
Rousseau on Education
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rousseau's ideas on how to educate children so they retain their natural selves and are not corrupted by society.
10 October 2019
Featuring: Richard Whatmore, Caroline Warman, Denis McManus
Spinoza
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Spinoza whose profound and complex ideas about God had him celebrated as an atheist in the 18th century.
3 May 2007
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham
Thomas Paine's Common Sense
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.
21 January 2016
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson
History of philosophy (11)
Alchemy
Melvyn Bragg discusses the pursuit of Alchemy, its history and legacy. What ideas could transform base metals into gold?
24 February 2005
Featuring: Peter Forshaw, Lauren Kassell, Stephen Pumfrey
David Hume
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.
6 October 2011
Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris
Galen
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Roman physician and medical theorist Galen.
10 October 2013
Featuring: Vivian Nutton, Helen King, Caroline Petit
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Phenomenology
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosophical movement phenomenology.
22 January 2015
Featuring: Simon Glendinning, Joanna Hodge, Stephen Mulhall
Pythagoras
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and influence of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans.
10 December 2009
Featuring: Ian Stewart, Serafina Cuomo, John O'Connor
Rhetoric
Melvyn Bragg discusses Rhetoric, the art of speaking which is an expression of inner virtue and also fundamental to ideas about democracy.
28 October 2004
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Thomas Healy, Ceri Sullivan
Stoicism
Melvyn Bragg discusses Stoicism, the third great philosophy of the Ancient World, which had a great influence on the Roman Empire.
3 March 2005
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Jonathan Rée, David Sedley
The Music of the Spheres
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the music of the spheres, the idea that the revolution of the planets generates a celestial harmony of profound beauty
19 June 2008
Featuring: Peter Forshaw, Jim Bennett, Angela Voss
The Scottish Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg discusses the emergence and impact of the Scottish Enlightenment which was led by the philosopher David Hume and the father of modern economics, Adam Smith.
5 December 2002
Featuring: Tom Devine, Karen O'Brien, Alexander Broadie
Wittgenstein
Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.
4 December 2003
Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn
Sonneteers (11)
Christina Rossetti
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Victorian poet Christina Rossetti.
1 December 2011
Featuring: Dinah Birch, Rhian Williams, Nicholas Shrimpton
Federico Garcia Lorca
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of Federico Garcia Lorca, author of Blood Wedding, Yerma and The House of Bernarda Alba, executed by Franco's forces, his body unrecovered.
4 July 2019
Featuring: Maria Delgado, Federico Bonaddio, Sarah Wright
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the works of Hopkins, unpublished in his lifetime, who FR Leavis called 'the only influential poet of the Victorian age and the greatest'.
21 March 2019
Featuring: Catherine Phillips, Jane Wright, Martin Dubois
John Clare
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss John Clare, the 'Northamptonshire peasant poet', whose writing was as celebrated as his life was humble.
9 February 2017
Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Mina Gorji, Simon Kövesi
Jorge Luis Borges
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges.
4 January 2007
Featuring: Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn
Milton
Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.
7 March 2002
Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden
Shakespeare and Literary Criticism
Melvyn Bragg discusses the enduring popular and academic appeal of Shakespeare and examines whether literary criticism and the academic institution ruins the pleasure of reading.
4 March 1999
Featuring: Harold Bloom, Jacqueline Rose
Shakespeare's Life
Melvyn Bragg discusses what we know about the life of William Shakespeare, a tantalising conundrum that has exercised minds since the day the playwright died.
15 March 2001
Featuring: Katherine Duncan-Jones, John Sutherland, Grace Ioppolo
Shakespeare's Work
Melvyn Bragg discusses whether the work of William Shakespeare is 'not of an age but for all time' or increasingly irrelevant museum pieces embalmed in out of reach language.
11 May 2000
Featuring: Frank Kermode, Michael Bogdanov, Germaine Greer
Yeats and Irish Politics
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poet W.B. Yeats and Irish politics from the suspension of home rule to the division of Ireland.
17 April 2008
Featuring: Roy Foster, Fran Brearton, Warwick Gould
Yeats and Mysticism
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and beliefs of the Irish Poet W B Yeats and explores how a passion for magic and mysticism served and stood alongside his poetry.
31 January 2002
Featuring: Roy Foster, Warwick Gould, Brenda Maddox
Critics of the Catholic Church (11)
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
David Hume
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.
6 October 2011
Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris
Dickens
Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?
12 July 2001
Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen
Erasmus
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the Dutch humanist scholar Desiderius Erasmus, one of the most significant figures of the Renaissance.
9 February 2012
Featuring: Diarmaid MacCulloch, Eamon Duffy, Jill Kraye
Garibaldi and the Risorgimento
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Giuseppe Garibaldi and his role in unifying Italy which, with his Red Shirts, he achieved substantially in 1861 and entirely in 1870.
1 December 2016
Featuring: Lucy Riall, Eugenio Biagini, David Laven
Hobbes
Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.
1 December 2005
Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett
John Wycliff and the Lollards
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the medieval philosopher and theologian John Wyclif and his followers, the Lollards.
16 June 2011
Featuring: Anthony Kenny, Anne Hudson, Rob Lutton
Milton
Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.
7 March 2002
Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.
12 January 2017
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson
Proust
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.
17 April 2003
Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser
Spinoza
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Spinoza whose profound and complex ideas about God had him celebrated as an atheist in the 18th century.
3 May 2007
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham
Philosophical movements (11)
Empiricism
Melvyn Bragg discusses the development of the idea formulated by John Locke that all knowledge arises from experience, and looks at its effect on the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution.
10 June 2004
Featuring: Judith Hawley, Murray Pittock, Jonathan Rée
Existentialism
Melvyn Bragg discusses existentialism, a twentieth century philosophy of everyday life concerned with the individual, and his or her place within the world.
28 June 2001
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Christina Howells, Simon Critchley
Humanism
Melvyn Bragg examines what happened to Humanism after its invention by Cicero in the first century BC. What does humanism actually mean and is it still a classical force in contemporary ideas?
8 February 2001
Featuring: Tony Davies, Lisa Jardine, Simon Goldhill
Logical Positivism
Melvyn Bragg and guests including Barry Smith discuss Logical Positivism, the radical philosophy of the Vienna Circle.
2 July 2009
Featuring: Barry Smith, Nancy Cartwright, Thomas Uebel
Ordinary language philosophy
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Ordinary Language Philosophy, one of the most important British contributions to 20th-century thought.
7 November 2013
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Ray Monk, Julia Tanney
Phenomenology
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosophical movement phenomenology.
22 January 2015
Featuring: Simon Glendinning, Joanna Hodge, Stephen Mulhall
Pragmatism
Melvyn Bragg discusses the American philosophy of pragmatism which purported that knowledge is only meaningful when coupled with action.
17 November 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Julian Baggini, Miranda Fricker
Progress
Melvyn Bragg examines whether while mankind has grown in years and knowledge, it has also progressed in terms of happiness and a truer understanding of the human condition.
18 November 1999
Featuring: Anthony O'Hear, Adam Phillips
Scepticism
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the history of philosophical scepticism.
5 July 2012
Featuring: Peter Millican, Melissa Lane, Jill Kraye
The Enlightenment in Britain
Melvyn Bragg examines the part British thinkers played in the Enlightenment in the 18th century, and examines whether the shifts of thought in those years provided the platform for the modern world.
18 January 2001
Featuring: Roy Porter, Linda Colley, Jeremy Black
The Scottish Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg discusses the emergence and impact of the Scottish Enlightenment which was led by the philosopher David Hume and the father of modern economics, Adam Smith.
5 December 2002
Featuring: Tom Devine, Karen O'Brien, Alexander Broadie
British novels adapted into plays (10)
A Christmas Carol
From Bah Humbug to God Bless Us Every One: Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Charles Dickens' story of Scrooge's salvation by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet To Come.
16 December 2021
Featuring: Juliet John, Jon Mee, Dinah Birch
Animal Farm
4 Extra Debut. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss George Orwell's Animal Farm, which he struggled to publish in WW2 as the USSR was an ally. From 2016.
29 September 2016
Featuring: Steven Connor, Mary Vincent, Robert Colls
Emma
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jane Austen's novel Emma, which features, according to Austen, 'a heroine whom no-one but myself will much like'.
19 November 2015
Featuring: Janet Todd, John Mullan, Emma Clery
Frankenstein
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Mary Shelley's story of Victor Frankenstein and the creature he makes from cadavers and then rejects - only for the monster to take his revenge
16 May 2019
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Michael Rossington, Jane Thomas
Jane Eyre
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, first published in 1847 under the pseudonym Currer Bell.
18 June 2015
Featuring: Dinah Birch, Karen O'Brien, Sara Lyons
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Orwell's dystopian novel where the state rewrites history, war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength - and Big Brother is watching you
15 September 2022
Featuring: David Dwan, Lisa Mullen, John Bowen
Robinson Crusoe
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Daniel Defoe's seminal novel Robinson Crusoe. Published in 1719, it was an immediate success and is considered the classic adventure story.
22 December 2011
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Judith Hawley, Bob Owens
Silas Marner
Melvyn Bragg and guests Rosemary Ashton, Dinah Birch and Valentine Cunningham discuss George Eliot's 1861 novel Silas Marner.
28 January 2010
Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Dinah Birch, Valentine Cunningham
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, which challenged Victorian morality and made Hardy's fortune when published in the 1890s.
5 May 2016
Featuring: Dinah Birch, Francis O'Gorman, Jane Thomas
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Anne Bronte's story of the mysterious Helen Graham who seeks a new independent life as an artist after escaping her abusive, alcoholic husband.
30 September 2021
Featuring: Alexandra Lewis, Marianne Thormählen, John Bowen
German male non-fiction writers (10)
Clausewitz and On War
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss On War, the 19th-century treatise on the theory of warfare by the Prussian soldier Carl von Clausewitz.
17 May 2012
Featuring: Saul David, Hew Strachan, Beatrice Heuser
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Marx
Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.
14 July 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones
Moses Mendelssohn
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of Moses Mendelssohn, one of the greatest thinkers of the German Enlightenment.
22 March 2012
Featuring: Christopher Clark, Abigail Green, Adam Sutcliffe
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.
12 January 2017
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
Walter Benjamin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable philosopher and critic whose ideas, developed in the 1930s, became highly influential after his death while escaping the Holocaust.
10 February 2022
Featuring: Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger
Philosophers of economics (10)
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
David Hume
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.
6 October 2011
Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris
Edmund Burke
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke, whose views on revolution in America and France were hugely influential.
3 June 2010
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Richard Bourke, John Keane
Ibn Khaldun
Melvyn Bragg and guests Robert Hoyland, Robert Irwin and Hugh Kennedy discuss the life and ideas of the 14th-century Arab philosopher of history Ibn Khaldun.
4 February 2010
Featuring: Robert Hoyland, Robert Graham Irwin, Hugh N. Kennedy
Marx
Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.
14 July 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones
Mill
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.
18 May 2006
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan
Peter Kropotkin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the Russian prince who became an anarchist and who argued that mutual aid was the key to evolution not survival of the fittest
24 February 2022
Featuring: Ruth Kinna, Lee Dugatkin, Simon Dixon
Popper
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.
8 February 2007
Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright
Rousseau on Education
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rousseau's ideas on how to educate children so they retain their natural selves and are not corrupted by society.
10 October 2019
Featuring: Richard Whatmore, Caroline Warman, Denis McManus
Weber's The Protestant Ethic
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Max Weber's book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
27 March 2014
Featuring: Peter Ghosh, Sam Whimster, Linda Woodhead
Jewish philosophers (10)
Bergson and Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.
9 May 2019
Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair
Hannah Arendt
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Hannah Arendt who examined totalitarianism and politics and, when covering the Eichmann trial, explored 'the banality of evil'.
2 February 2017
Featuring: Lyndsey Stonebridge, Frisbee Sheffield, Robert Eaglestone
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
23 May 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene
Moses Mendelssohn
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of Moses Mendelssohn, one of the greatest thinkers of the German Enlightenment.
22 March 2012
Featuring: Christopher Clark, Abigail Green, Adam Sutcliffe
Popper
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.
8 February 2007
Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright
Rosa Luxemburg
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rosa Luxemburg, 'Red Rosa', a leading revolutionary and agitator in Poland and Germany until her arrest and murder in the Spartacus Revolt 1919.
13 April 2017
Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Mark Jones, Nadine Rossol
Simone Weil
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil. Admired by Albert Camus and Iris Murdoch, she achieved a great deal in her short life.
15 November 2012
Featuring: Beatrice Han-Pile, Stephen Plant, David Levy
Spinoza
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Spinoza whose profound and complex ideas about God had him celebrated as an atheist in the 18th century.
3 May 2007
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham
Walter Benjamin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable philosopher and critic whose ideas, developed in the 1930s, became highly influential after his death while escaping the Holocaust.
10 February 2022
Featuring: Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger
Wittgenstein
Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.
4 December 2003
Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn
Atheist philosophers (10)
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Camus
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Nobel Prize winning Algerian-French writer and existentialist philosopher Albert Camus.
3 January 2008
Featuring: Peter Dunwoodie, David Walker, Christina Howells
Iris Murdoch
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the growing prominence of the philosophy of one of the most celebrated novelists of the 20th century, who developed her ideas in response to WWII.
21 October 2021
Featuring: Anil Gomes, Anne Rowe, Miles Leeson
Lenin
Melvyn Bragg investigates what drove the Soviet leader Lenin, and enabled him to develop a model to export communism and build an original political system that remained intact for over seventy years.
16 March 2000
Featuring: Robert Service, Vitali Vitaliev
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
23 May 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene
Marx
Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.
14 July 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.
12 January 2017
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson
Sartre
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
7 October 2004
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
Simone de Beauvoir
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.
22 October 2015
Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd
Novels adapted into comics (10)
Animal Farm
4 Extra Debut. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss George Orwell's Animal Farm, which he struggled to publish in WW2 as the USSR was an ally. From 2016.
29 September 2016
Featuring: Steven Connor, Mary Vincent, Robert Colls
Don Quixote
Melvyn Bragg discusses the importance, originality and enduring appeal of Cervantes’ classic 17th century Spanish novel Don Quixote, a cornerstone of Western literature.
16 March 2006
Featuring: Barry Ife, Edwin Williamson, Jane Whetnall
Emma
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jane Austen's novel Emma, which features, according to Austen, 'a heroine whom no-one but myself will much like'.
19 November 2015
Featuring: Janet Todd, John Mullan, Emma Clery
Frankenstein
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Mary Shelley's story of Victor Frankenstein and the creature he makes from cadavers and then rejects - only for the monster to take his revenge
16 May 2019
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Michael Rossington, Jane Thomas
Great Gatsby
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the great American novels of the 20th Century, where inexplicably rich Jay Gatsby aims to win Daisy Buchanan from her millionaire husband.
14 January 2021
Featuring: Sarah Churchwell, Philip McGowan, William Blazek
Moby Dick
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Moby-Dick (1851) by Herman Melville, the story of Ahab and the white whale, the most popular of around 1,000 ideas that listeners submitted.
7 December 2017
Featuring: Bridget Bennett, Katie McGettigan, Graham Thompson
Robinson Crusoe
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Daniel Defoe's seminal novel Robinson Crusoe. Published in 1719, it was an immediate success and is considered the classic adventure story.
22 December 2011
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Judith Hawley, Bob Owens
Romance of the Three Kingdoms
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Romance of the Three Kingdoms, widely regarded as one of the greatest works of Chinese literature.
27 June 2013
Featuring: Frances Wood, Craig Clunas, Margaret Hillenbrand
Tristram Shandy
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Laurence Sterne's comic novel Tristram Shandy.
24 April 2014
Featuring: Judith Hawley, John Mullan, Mary Newbould
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss 'Uncle Tom's Cabin', the bestselling American novel of the 19th century which has slavery as its central theme.
8 June 2006
Featuring: Celeste-Marie Bernier, Sarah Meer, Clive Webb
Philosophers of mathematics (10)
Al-Kindi
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Al-Kindi, often described as the first philosopher in the Arabic tradition.
28 June 2012
Featuring: Hugh Kennedy, James Montgomery, Amira Bennison
Avicenna
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Avicenna, among the most important philosophers in the history of Islam.
8 November 2007
Featuring: Peter Adamson, Amira Bennison, Nader El-Bizri
Bergson and Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.
9 May 2019
Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
David Hume
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.
6 October 2011
Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris
Hobbes
Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.
1 December 2005
Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett
Jorge Luis Borges
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges.
4 January 2007
Featuring: Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn
Popper
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.
8 February 2007
Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright
Pythagoras
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and influence of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans.
10 December 2009
Featuring: Ian Stewart, Serafina Cuomo, John O'Connor
Wittgenstein
Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.
4 December 2003
Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn
Solar System (10)
Asteroids
Melvyn Bragg discusses asteroids, once regarded as “the vermin of the solar system” but now viewed as key to our understanding of the beginning of time.
3 November 2005
Featuring: Monica Grady, Carolin Crawford, John Zarnecki
Astronomy and Empire
Melvyn Bragg discusses the relationship between astronomy and the British Empire, how astronomical science provided a means for navigation and British naval control.
4 May 2006
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Kristen Lippincott, Allan Chapman
Comets
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss comets, the 'dirty snowballs' of the solar system which orbit the sun.
17 January 2013
Featuring: Monica Grady, Paul Murdin, Don Pollacco
Mars
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the planet Mars. Named after the Roman god of war, Mars has been a source of continual fascination.
11 January 2007
Featuring: John Zarnecki, Colin Pillinger, Monica Grady
Saturn
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Saturn, the most distant planet easily visible to the human eye, with over 60 moons and, with its rings, one of the most striking sights in space.
14 January 2016
Featuring: Carolin Crawford, Michele Dougherty, Andrew Coates
The Kuiper belt
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Kuiper Belt region, home to Pluto and countless remnants from the beginnings of our solar system.
2 March 2017
Featuring: Carolin Crawford, Monica Grady, Stephen Lowry
The Moon
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the origins, science and mythology of the moon. Man may have landed on the moon, but our 'twin planet' in many ways still remains a mystery.
3 November 2011
Featuring: Paul Murdin, Carolin Crawford, Ian Crawford
The Planets
Melvyn Bragg discusses our knowledge of the planets in both our and other solar systems. What causes them to form and what is the likelihood of there being another with properties similar to Earth’s?
27 May 2004
Featuring: Paul Murdin, Hugh Jones, Carolin Crawford
The Sun
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the science of the sun, source of all our energy.
10 July 2014
Featuring: Carolin Crawford, Yvonne Elsworth, Louise Harra
Venus
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Earth's neighbouring planet, once thought very similar but now known to be extremely volcanic with a surface temperature of 450C.
27 December 2018
Featuring: Carolin Crawford, Colin Wilson, Andrew Coates
Concepts in epistemology (10)
Cogito Ergo Sum
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss one of the most famous statements in philosophy, 'Cogito ergo sum', Rene Descartes' attempt to establish what we can truly know.
28 April 2011
Featuring: Susan James, John Cottingham, Stephen Mulhall
Common Sense Philosophy
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss 18th century common sense philosophy which involves the most profound questions about human knowledge we are capable of asking.
21 June 2007
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Melissa Lane, Alexander Broadie
Consciousness
Melvyn Bragg examines why the elusiveness and impenetrability of consciousness continues to fascinate both philosophers and scientists. Is the human mind just not built to understand its own basis?
25 November 1999
Featuring: Ted Honderich, Roger Penrose
Ockham's Razor
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosophical idea of Ockham’s Razor and the medieval philosopher who gave his name to it, William of Ockham.
31 May 2007
Featuring: Anthony Kenny, Marilyn Adams, Richard Alan Cross
Perception and the Senses
Melvyn Bragg discusses perception: how the brain reacts to the mass of data continually crowding it and examines what governs our perception of the world.
28 April 2005
Featuring: Richard Gregory, David Moore, Gemma Calvert
Progress
Melvyn Bragg examines whether while mankind has grown in years and knowledge, it has also progressed in terms of happiness and a truer understanding of the human condition.
18 November 1999
Featuring: Anthony O'Hear, Adam Phillips
The Brain and Consciousness
Melvyn Bragg discusses how our increased knowledge of the functioning of the brain has changed our feelings about our own natures, and our approach to the behaviour and treatment of others.
19 November 1998
Featuring: Steven Rose, Dan Robinson
The Mind/Body Problem
Melvyn Bragg discusses the history of thought about the mind/body problem in philosophy. Does the mind rule the body or the body rule the mind? And where does the mind reside?
13 January 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Julian Baggini, Sue James
Time
Melvyn Bragg examines the history of mankind’s attempt to understand the nature of time. Does it exist independently of our perception of it, or is it merely a figment of our imagination?
30 December 1999
Featuring: Neil Johnson, Lee Smolin
Truth
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss philosophical approaches to truth.
18 December 2014
Featuring: Simon Blackburn, Jennifer Hornsby, Crispin Wright
Ontology (10)
Cogito Ergo Sum
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss one of the most famous statements in philosophy, 'Cogito ergo sum', Rene Descartes' attempt to establish what we can truly know.
28 April 2011
Featuring: Susan James, John Cottingham, Stephen Mulhall
Consciousness
Melvyn Bragg examines why the elusiveness and impenetrability of consciousness continues to fascinate both philosophers and scientists. Is the human mind just not built to understand its own basis?
25 November 1999
Featuring: Ted Honderich, Roger Penrose
Materialism
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Materialism– the philosophical idea that matter constitutes all that exists.
24 April 2008
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Caroline Warman, Anthony O'Hear
Ockham's Razor
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosophical idea of Ockham’s Razor and the medieval philosopher who gave his name to it, William of Ockham.
31 May 2007
Featuring: Anthony Kenny, Marilyn Adams, Richard Alan Cross
Perception and the Senses
Melvyn Bragg discusses perception: how the brain reacts to the mass of data continually crowding it and examines what governs our perception of the world.
28 April 2005
Featuring: Richard Gregory, David Moore, Gemma Calvert
Progress
Melvyn Bragg examines whether while mankind has grown in years and knowledge, it has also progressed in terms of happiness and a truer understanding of the human condition.
18 November 1999
Featuring: Anthony O'Hear, Adam Phillips
The Brain and Consciousness
Melvyn Bragg discusses how our increased knowledge of the functioning of the brain has changed our feelings about our own natures, and our approach to the behaviour and treatment of others.
19 November 1998
Featuring: Steven Rose, Dan Robinson
The Mind/Body Problem
Melvyn Bragg discusses the history of thought about the mind/body problem in philosophy. Does the mind rule the body or the body rule the mind? And where does the mind reside?
13 January 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Julian Baggini, Sue James
Time
Melvyn Bragg examines the history of mankind’s attempt to understand the nature of time. Does it exist independently of our perception of it, or is it merely a figment of our imagination?
30 December 1999
Featuring: Neil Johnson, Lee Smolin
Truth
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss philosophical approaches to truth.
18 December 2014
Featuring: Simon Blackburn, Jennifer Hornsby, Crispin Wright
History of science (10)
Alchemy
Melvyn Bragg discusses the pursuit of Alchemy, its history and legacy. What ideas could transform base metals into gold?
24 February 2005
Featuring: Peter Forshaw, Lauren Kassell, Stephen Pumfrey
David Hume
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.
6 October 2011
Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris
Galen
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Roman physician and medical theorist Galen.
10 October 2013
Featuring: Vivian Nutton, Helen King, Caroline Petit
Ice ages
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss ice ages, periods when the temperature of the Earth has dropped to low levels.
14 February 2013
Featuring: Jane Francis, Richard Corfield, Carrie Lear
Logical Positivism
Melvyn Bragg and guests including Barry Smith discuss Logical Positivism, the radical philosophy of the Vienna Circle.
2 July 2009
Featuring: Barry Smith, Nancy Cartwright, Thomas Uebel
Ockham's Razor
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosophical idea of Ockham’s Razor and the medieval philosopher who gave his name to it, William of Ockham.
31 May 2007
Featuring: Anthony Kenny, Marilyn Adams, Richard Alan Cross
Pythagoras
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and influence of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans.
10 December 2009
Featuring: Ian Stewart, Serafina Cuomo, John O'Connor
Science and Religion
Melvyn Bragg discusses the relationship and the areas of conflict between science and religion, and examines why mankind seeks to find all encompassing answers in these two realms.
25 January 2001
Featuring: Stephen Jay Gould, John Haldane, Hilary Rose
The Music of the Spheres
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the music of the spheres, the idea that the revolution of the planets generates a celestial harmony of profound beauty
19 June 2008
Featuring: Peter Forshaw, Jim Bennett, Angela Voss
Women and Enlightenment Science
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the role played by women in Enlightenment science.
4 November 2010
Featuring: Patricia Fara, Karen O'Brien, Judith Hawley
Censored books (9)
Animal Farm
4 Extra Debut. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss George Orwell's Animal Farm, which he struggled to publish in WW2 as the USSR was an ally. From 2016.
29 September 2016
Featuring: Steven Connor, Mary Vincent, Robert Colls
Frankenstein
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Mary Shelley's story of Victor Frankenstein and the creature he makes from cadavers and then rejects - only for the monster to take his revenge
16 May 2019
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Michael Rossington, Jane Thomas
James Joyce's Ulysses
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss James Joyce's celebrated novel Ulysses.
14 June 2012
Featuring: Steven Connor, Jeri Johnson, Richard Brown
Madame Bovary
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the literary sensation caused by the trial for indecency of Gustave Flaubert's novel Madame Bovary.
12 July 2007
Featuring: Andy Martin, Mary Orr, Robert Gildea
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Orwell's dystopian novel where the state rewrites history, war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength - and Big Brother is watching you
15 September 2022
Featuring: David Dwan, Lisa Mullen, John Bowen
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, which challenged Victorian morality and made Hardy's fortune when published in the 1890s.
5 May 2016
Featuring: Dinah Birch, Francis O'Gorman, Jane Thomas
The Encyclopédie
Melvyn Bragg discusses the French encyclopédie, one of the great achievements of the Enlightenment with contributors such as Voltaire, Rousseau, D’Alembert and Dennis Diderot.
26 October 2006
Featuring: Judith Hawley, Caroline Warman, David Wootton
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss 'Uncle Tom's Cabin', the bestselling American novel of the 19th century which has slavery as its central theme.
8 June 2006
Featuring: Celeste-Marie Bernier, Sarah Meer, Clive Webb
Voltaire's Candide
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Voltaire's satirical novel Candide, first published in 1759.
3 May 2012
Featuring: David Wootton, Nicholas Cronk, Caroline Warman
19th-century German male writers (9)
Clausewitz and On War
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss On War, the 19th-century treatise on the theory of warfare by the Prussian soldier Carl von Clausewitz.
17 May 2012
Featuring: Saul David, Hew Strachan, Beatrice Heuser
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.
12 January 2017
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
The Brothers Grimm
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm and what they can tell us about the German imagination and 19th-century romantic nationalism.
5 February 2009
Featuring: Juliette Wood, Marina Warner, Tony Phelan
Weber's The Protestant Ethic
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Max Weber's book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
27 March 2014
Featuring: Peter Ghosh, Sam Whimster, Linda Woodhead
19th-century philosophers (9)
Bergson and Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.
9 May 2019
Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair
Germaine de Staël
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas, works and life of Germaine de Stael (1766-1817), a literary critic, author, opponent of Napoleon and developer of Romanticism.
16 November 2017
Featuring: Catriona Seth, Alison Finch, Katherine Astbury
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.
12 January 2017
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson
Peter Kropotkin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the Russian prince who became an anarchist and who argued that mutual aid was the key to evolution not survival of the fittest
24 February 2022
Featuring: Ruth Kinna, Lee Dugatkin, Simon Dixon
Proust
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.
17 April 2003
Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser
Rosa Luxemburg
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rosa Luxemburg, 'Red Rosa', a leading revolutionary and agitator in Poland and Germany until her arrest and murder in the Spartacus Revolt 1919.
13 April 2017
Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Mark Jones, Nadine Rossol
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
Thomas Paine's Common Sense
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.
21 January 2016
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson
English male non-fiction writers (9)
Auden
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss WH Auden's life and poetry from Europe before WWII, reflecting on his travels to Spain, China and Germany and the rise of totalitarianism.
19 December 2019
Featuring: Mark Ford, Janet Montefiore, Jeremy Noel-Tod
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Booth's Life and Labour Survey
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Charles Booth's ambitious project to discover how many people in late Victorian London were living in poverty, and understand why
10 June 2021
Featuring: Emma Griffin, Sarah Wise, Lawrence Goldman
Dickens
Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?
12 July 2001
Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen
Edward Gibbon
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the writer of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, one of the most celebrated works of its kind.
17 June 2021
Featuring: David Womersley, Charlotte Roberts, Karen O’Brien
Mill
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.
18 May 2006
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan
Polidori's The Vampyre
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the myths that gave rise to this novella from 1819 by Byron's physician, John Polidori, and the works such as Bram Stoker's Dracula it inspired.
07 April 2022
Featuring: Nick Groom, Samantha George, Martyn Rady
Pope
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the satirist Alexander Pope. One of the greatest poets of the English language, his brilliant satires have made him popular in our age but not in his own.
9 November 2006
Featuring: John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Valerie Rumbold
Sir Thomas Browne
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, ideas and language of Browne (1605-82), a doctor sharing his personal views on science, history and religion at a time of great change
6 June 2019
Featuring: Claire Preston, Jessica Wolfe, Kevin Killeen
Logicians (9)
Averroes
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Averroes who worked to reconcile the theology of Islam with the rationality of Aristotle, achieving both fame and infamy.
5 October 2006
Featuring: Amira Bennison, Peter Adamson, Anthony Kenny
Avicenna
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Avicenna, among the most important philosophers in the history of Islam.
8 November 2007
Featuring: Peter Adamson, Amira Bennison, Nader El-Bizri
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Mill
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.
18 May 2006
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan
Plato's Gorgias
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock
25 November 2021
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh
Popper
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.
8 February 2007
Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
Socrates
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.
27 September 2007
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett
English people of Scottish descent (9)
Ada Lovelace
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 19th century mathematician and hard living daughter of Lord Byron, Ada Lovelace.
6 March 2008
Featuring: Patricia Fara, Doron Swade, John Fuegi
Alan Turing
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and life of the founder of computer science - whose work helped crack enemy codes in WW2 - and his exploration of artificial intelligence.
15 October 2020
Featuring: Leslie Ann Goldberg, Simon Schaffer, Andrew Hodges
Alfred Russel Wallace
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Victorian pioneer of evolutionary theory Alfred Russel Wallace.
21 March 2013
Featuring: Steve Jones, George Beccaloni, Ted Benton
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Elizabeth Gaskell's novel North and South
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, who set her 1855 novel in a version of Manchester she called Milton in the county of Darkshire.
9 March 2017
Featuring: Sally Shuttleworth, Dinah Birch, Jenny Uglow
John Ruskin
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and work of John Ruskin, art and social critic, and one of the most influential figures of the Victorian era.
31 March 2005
Featuring: Dinah Birch, Keith Hanley, Stefan Collini
Mill
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.
18 May 2006
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan
Rudyard Kipling
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Rudyard Kipling, a writer sometimes described as the poet of empire.
16 October 2014
Featuring: Howard Booth, Daniel Karlin, Jan Montefiore
Voyages of James Cook
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the science behind Capt James Cook's three voyages of discovery, from 1768 to 1779, one of over a thousand ideas suggested by listeners.
3 December 2015
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Rebekah Higgitt, Sophie Forgan
Writers from Paris (9)
Bergson and Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.
9 May 2019
Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair
George Sand
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work and life of Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin who in C19th France wrote many extremely successful novels, under the name George Sand
6 February 2020
Featuring: Belinda Jack, Angela Ryan, Nigel Harkness
Germaine de Staël
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas, works and life of Germaine de Stael (1766-1817), a literary critic, author, opponent of Napoleon and developer of Romanticism.
16 November 2017
Featuring: Catriona Seth, Alison Finch, Katherine Astbury
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
23 May 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene
Proust
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.
17 April 2003
Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser
Sartre
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
7 October 2004
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells
Simone Weil
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil. Admired by Albert Camus and Iris Murdoch, she achieved a great deal in her short life.
15 November 2012
Featuring: Beatrice Han-Pile, Stephen Plant, David Levy
Simone de Beauvoir
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.
22 October 2015
Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd
Tocqueville: Democracy in America
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alexis de Tocqueville and his study of the American democratic system, written as an example to France of how democracy might develop there.
22 March 2018
Featuring: Robert Gildea, Susan-Mary Grant, Jeremy Jennings
Novels first published in serial form (9)
Crime and Punishment
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Dostoevsky's novel in which Raskolnikov is mediocre but thinks he's superior and his future more important than the lives of the women he kills
14 November 2019
Featuring: Sarah Huspith, Oliver Ready, Sarah Young
Eugene Onegin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837), often described as his masterpiece, which tells the tragic story of Onegin, Lensky and Tatyana.
22 June 2017
Featuring: Andrew Kahn, Emily Finer, Simon Dixon
Heart of Darkness
Melvyn Bragg discusses Joseph Conrad's Novel, Heart of Darkness, a critique of colonialism at the turn of the century
15 February 2007
Featuring: Susan Jones, Robert Hampson, Laurence Davies
James Joyce's Ulysses
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss James Joyce's celebrated novel Ulysses.
14 June 2012
Featuring: Steven Connor, Jeri Johnson, Richard Brown
Madame Bovary
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the literary sensation caused by the trial for indecency of Gustave Flaubert's novel Madame Bovary.
12 July 2007
Featuring: Andy Martin, Mary Orr, Robert Gildea
Middlemarch
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss George Eliot's Study of Provincial Life, set before the Reform Act 1832 in a small, fictional town in the Midlands surrounded by farmland.
18 April 2018
Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Kathryn Hughes, John Bowen
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, which challenged Victorian morality and made Hardy's fortune when published in the 1890s.
5 May 2016
Featuring: Dinah Birch, Francis O'Gorman, Jane Thomas
The Time Machine
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and anxieties in late Victorian London, explored by HG Wells in his story of time travel, evolution and a planet unfit for humans.
17 October 2019
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Amanda Rees, Simon James
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss 'Uncle Tom's Cabin', the bestselling American novel of the 19th century which has slavery as its central theme.
8 June 2006
Featuring: Celeste-Marie Bernier, Sarah Meer, Clive Webb
Members of the American Philosophical Society (9)
Benjamin Franklin
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.
1 March 2012
Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara
Darwin: On the Origins of Charles Darwin
Melvyn Bragg presents a series about the life and work of Charles Darwin. Darwin's early life and time at Cambridge, where his interests shifted from religion to natural science.
5 January 2009
Featuring: Jim Moore, Steve Jones, David Norman, Colin Higgins
Humboldt
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Prussian naturalist and explorer, Alexander Von Humboldt. A hero in South America; Charles Darwin described him as ‘the greatest scientific traveller who ever lived’.
28 September 2006
Featuring: Jason Wilson, Patricia Fara, Jim Secord
Louis Pasteur
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Louis Pasteur, microbiologist, developer of vaccines, saviour of the French beer and wine industries and preserver of milk.
18 May 2017
Featuring: Andrew Mendelsohn, Anne Hardy, Michael Worboys
President Ulysses S Grant
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Grant's role in rebuilding America in the decade after the Civil War and his impact on African-Americans and Native Americans.
30 May 2019
Featuring: Erik Mathisen, Susan-Mary Grant, Robert Cook
Rutherford
Melvyn Bragg discusses Ernest Rutherford. He is seen as the father of nuclear science, a great charismatic figure who mapped the landscape of the sub-atomic world.
19 February 2004
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Jim Al-Khalili, Patricia Fara
Thomas Edison
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of Thomas Edison, one of the great inventors and cultural figures of modern America.
9 December 2010
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Kathleen Burk, Iwan Morus
Thomas Paine's Common Sense
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.
21 January 2016
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson
Washington and the American Revolution
Melvyn Bragg discusses the first President of the United States, George Washington, and the people and ideas that saw the American Revolution overthrow British rule in 1775.
24 June 2004
Featuring: Carol Berkin, Simon Middleton, Colin Bonwick
Empiricists (9)
Abelard and Heloise
Melvyn Bragg discusses the story of Abelard and Heloise, a medieval tale of literature and philosophy, love and scandal in the high Middle Ages.
5 May 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Henrietta Leyser, Michael Clanchy
Bergson and Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.
9 May 2019
Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Bishop Berkeley
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the philosopher George Berkeley, one of the most significant thinkers of the 18th century.
20 March 2014
Featuring: Peter Millican, Tom Stoneham, Michela Massimi
David Hume
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.
6 October 2011
Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris
Hobbes
Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.
1 December 2005
Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett
Mill
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.
18 May 2006
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan
Montaigne
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Michel de Montaigne. Best known for his influential Essays, Montaigne is regarded as the father of modern sceptical thought.
25 April 2013
Featuring: David Wootton, Terence Cave, Felicity Green
Roger Bacon
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss medieval English scholar Roger Bacon, an early pioneer of science who became known as Doctor Mirabilis.
20 April 2017
Featuring: Jack Cunningham, Amanda Power, Elly Truitt
Nobel laureates in Literature (9)
Bergson and Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.
9 May 2019
Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Camus
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Nobel Prize winning Algerian-French writer and existentialist philosopher Albert Camus.
3 January 2008
Featuring: Peter Dunwoodie, David Walker, Christina Howells
Rabindranath Tagore
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore, winner of the 1913 Nobel Prize for Literature.
7 May 2015
Featuring: Chandrika Kaul, Bashabi Fraser, John Stevens
Rudyard Kipling
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Rudyard Kipling, a writer sometimes described as the poet of empire.
16 October 2014
Featuring: Howard Booth, Daniel Karlin, Jan Montefiore
Samuel Beckett
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the author of Waiting for Godot, who lived in Paris and wrote in French as he found that more difficult than writing in English
17 January 2019
Featuring: Steven Connor, Laura Salisbury, Mark Nixon
Sartre
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
7 October 2004
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells
Yeats and Irish Politics
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poet W.B. Yeats and Irish politics from the suspension of home rule to the division of Ireland.
17 April 2008
Featuring: Roy Foster, Fran Brearton, Warwick Gould
Yeats and Mysticism
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and beliefs of the Irish Poet W B Yeats and explores how a passion for magic and mysticism served and stood alongside his poetry.
31 January 2002
Featuring: Roy Foster, Warwick Gould, Brenda Maddox
Virtue (9)
Altruism
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss altruism, described as “an unselfish attention to the needs of others” but how does this square with Darwin’s theory of Evolution?
23 November 2006
Featuring: Miranda Fricker, Richard Dawkins, John Dupré
Duty
Melvyn Bragg discusses duty; the concept that others have a claim over our actions has been at the heart of the history of civilised society.
13 November 2003
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Annabel Brett, A. C. Grayling
Friendship
Melvyn Bragg discusses the concept of friendship, considered in antiquity as being an essential constituent of both a good society and a good life.
2 March 2006
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Mark Vernon, John Mullan
Politeness
Melvyn Bragg discusses politeness, the revolution in manners that transformed the social scene in eighteenth century Britain.
30 September 2004
Featuring: Amanda Vickery, David Wootton, John Mullan
Progress
Melvyn Bragg examines whether while mankind has grown in years and knowledge, it has also progressed in terms of happiness and a truer understanding of the human condition.
18 November 1999
Featuring: Anthony O'Hear, Adam Phillips
Stoicism
Melvyn Bragg discusses Stoicism, the third great philosophy of the Ancient World, which had a great influence on the Roman Empire.
3 March 2005
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Jonathan Rée, David Sedley
The Enlightenment in Britain
Melvyn Bragg examines the part British thinkers played in the Enlightenment in the 18th century, and examines whether the shifts of thought in those years provided the platform for the modern world.
18 January 2001
Featuring: Roy Porter, Linda Colley, Jeremy Black
Truth
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss philosophical approaches to truth.
18 December 2014
Featuring: Simon Blackburn, Jennifer Hornsby, Crispin Wright
Virtue
Melvyn Bragg discusses a history of the concept of virtue from the ancient Greeks to modern ideas, and examines why we need it and what ideals of behaviour provide a universal framework for it.
28 February 2002
Featuring: Galen Strawson, Miranda Fricker, Roger Crisp
Philosophy of science (9)
Empiricism
Melvyn Bragg discusses the development of the idea formulated by John Locke that all knowledge arises from experience, and looks at its effect on the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution.
10 June 2004
Featuring: Judith Hawley, Murray Pittock, Jonathan Rée
Genetic Determinism
Melvyn Bragg explores the part genes play in our personalities and examines how this affects our free will. Do genetic explanations for behaviour make a nonsense of free will, and therefore morality?
23 September 1999
Featuring: Steve Jones, Matt Ridley
Laws of Nature
Melvyn Bragg discusses the quest to find a single over-arching equation that unites all of physics and examines whether what is true in physics is true in all areas of existence.
19 October 2000
Featuring: Mark Buchanan, Frank Close, Nancy Cartwright
Logical Positivism
Melvyn Bragg and guests including Barry Smith discuss Logical Positivism, the radical philosophy of the Vienna Circle.
2 July 2009
Featuring: Barry Smith, Nancy Cartwright, Thomas Uebel
Ockham's Razor
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosophical idea of Ockham’s Razor and the medieval philosopher who gave his name to it, William of Ockham.
31 May 2007
Featuring: Anthony Kenny, Marilyn Adams, Richard Alan Cross
Pragmatism
Melvyn Bragg discusses the American philosophy of pragmatism which purported that knowledge is only meaningful when coupled with action.
17 November 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Julian Baggini, Miranda Fricker
Science and Religion
Melvyn Bragg discusses the relationship and the areas of conflict between science and religion, and examines why mankind seeks to find all encompassing answers in these two realms.
25 January 2001
Featuring: Stephen Jay Gould, John Haldane, Hilary Rose
The Scientific method
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Scientific Method, the systematic and analytical approach to scientific discovery.
26 January 2012
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, John Worrall, Michela Massimi
Vitalism
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Vitalism, an 18th and 19th century quest for the spark of life and the science behind Frankenstein.
16 October 2008
Featuring: Patricia Fara, Andrew Mendelsohn, Pietro Corsi
Concepts in ethics (9)
Evil
Melvyn Bragg discusses the notion of evil in western philosophy.
3 May 2001
Featuring: Jones Erwin, Stephen Mulhall, Margaret Atkins
Free Will(500th programme)
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the problem of free will - the extent to which we are able to choose our actions.
10 March 2011
Featuring: Simon Blackburn, Helen Beebee, Galen Strawson
Good and Evil
Melvyn Bragg examines what the discoveries of Darwin and our knowledge of the true physiological nature and history of man has done for us in terms understanding our concepts of good and evil.
1 April 1999
Featuring: Leszek Kołakowski, Galen Strawson
Happiness
Melvyn Bragg discusses whether 'happiness' means living a life of pleasure or of virtue. How much does this ancient philosophical debate still define what it means to be happy today?
24 January 2002
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Simon Blackburn, A. C. Grayling
Just War
Melvyn Bragg examines where the idea of a just war originated and whether after over 100 years of almost unimaginably violent conflict, the term has any meaning at all.
3 June 1999
Featuring: John Keane, Niall Ferguson
Ockham's Razor
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosophical idea of Ockham’s Razor and the medieval philosopher who gave his name to it, William of Ockham.
31 May 2007
Featuring: Anthony Kenny, Marilyn Adams, Richard Alan Cross
Perception and the Senses
Melvyn Bragg discusses perception: how the brain reacts to the mass of data continually crowding it and examines what governs our perception of the world.
28 April 2005
Featuring: Richard Gregory, David Moore, Gemma Calvert
The Unintended Consequences of Mathematics
Melvyn Bragg and guests explore the unintended consequences of mathematical discoveries, from alternating current to predicting the path of asteroids.
11 February 2010
Featuring: John D. Barrow, Colva Roney-Dougal, Marcus du Sautoy
Virtue
Melvyn Bragg discusses a history of the concept of virtue from the ancient Greeks to modern ideas, and examines why we need it and what ideals of behaviour provide a universal framework for it.
28 February 2002
Featuring: Galen Strawson, Miranda Fricker, Roger Crisp
Novels adapted into ballets (8)
A Christmas Carol
From Bah Humbug to God Bless Us Every One: Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Charles Dickens' story of Scrooge's salvation by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet To Come.
16 December 2021
Featuring: Juliet John, Jon Mee, Dinah Birch
Don Quixote
Melvyn Bragg discusses the importance, originality and enduring appeal of Cervantes’ classic 17th century Spanish novel Don Quixote, a cornerstone of Western literature.
16 March 2006
Featuring: Barry Ife, Edwin Williamson, Jane Whetnall
Eugene Onegin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837), often described as his masterpiece, which tells the tragic story of Onegin, Lensky and Tatyana.
22 June 2017
Featuring: Andrew Kahn, Emily Finer, Simon Dixon
Frankenstein
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Mary Shelley's story of Victor Frankenstein and the creature he makes from cadavers and then rejects - only for the monster to take his revenge
16 May 2019
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Michael Rossington, Jane Thomas
Great Gatsby
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the great American novels of the 20th Century, where inexplicably rich Jay Gatsby aims to win Daisy Buchanan from her millionaire husband.
14 January 2021
Featuring: Sarah Churchwell, Philip McGowan, William Blazek
Jane Eyre
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, first published in 1847 under the pseudonym Currer Bell.
18 June 2015
Featuring: Dinah Birch, Karen O'Brien, Sara Lyons
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Orwell's dystopian novel where the state rewrites history, war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength - and Big Brother is watching you
15 September 2022
Featuring: David Dwan, Lisa Mullen, John Bowen
Wuthering Heights
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Emily Bronte's story of Heathcliff and Cathy, of love, hatred, revenge and self-destruction across two generations in a remote moorland home.
28 September 2017
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Bowen, Alexandra Lewis
18th-century philosophers (8)
Edmund Burke
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke, whose views on revolution in America and France were hugely influential.
3 June 2010
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Richard Bourke, John Keane
Emilie du Châtelet
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 18th-century mathematical genius whose insights into Newton and Leibniz were part of the great advance in science in the Enlightenment.
4 February 2021
Featuring: Patricia Fara, David Wootton, Judith Zinsser
Germaine de Staël
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas, works and life of Germaine de Stael (1766-1817), a literary critic, author, opponent of Napoleon and developer of Romanticism.
16 November 2017
Featuring: Catriona Seth, Alison Finch, Katherine Astbury
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Moses Mendelssohn
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of Moses Mendelssohn, one of the greatest thinkers of the German Enlightenment.
22 March 2012
Featuring: Christopher Clark, Abigail Green, Adam Sutcliffe
Olympe de Gouges
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, ideas and works of the Frenchwoman who wrote The Declaration of the Rights of Woman in 1791 during the French Revolution
21 April 2022
Featuring: Catriona Seth, Katherine Astbury, Sanja Perovic
Rousseau on Education
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rousseau's ideas on how to educate children so they retain their natural selves and are not corrupted by society.
10 October 2019
Featuring: Richard Whatmore, Caroline Warman, Denis McManus
Thomas Paine's Common Sense
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.
21 January 2016
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson
19th-century German philosophers (8)
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Marx
Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.
14 July 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.
12 January 2017
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
Weber's The Protestant Ethic
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Max Weber's book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
27 March 2014
Featuring: Peter Ghosh, Sam Whimster, Linda Woodhead
German Lutherans (8)
Albrecht Dürer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Dürer, the creator of some of the most memorable images in the late Renaissance from his woodcut of a rhinoceros to his stunning self portraits.
12 November 2020
Featuring: Susan Foister, Giulia Bartrum, Ulinka Rublack
Bismarck
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the original Iron Chancellor, Otto Von Bismarck, one of 19th Century Europe’s most influential statesmen and the founder of modern Germany.
22 March 2007
Featuring: Richard J Evans, Christopher Clark, Katharine Lerman
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Gauss, 'prince of mathematicians', including those on number theory, geometry, probability theory, astronomy and electromagnetism.
30 November 2017
Featuring: Marcus du Sautoy, Colva Roney-Dougal, Nick Evans
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Humboldt
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Prussian naturalist and explorer, Alexander Von Humboldt. A hero in South America; Charles Darwin described him as ‘the greatest scientific traveller who ever lived’.
28 September 2006
Featuring: Jason Wilson, Patricia Fara, Jim Secord
Johannes Kepler
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the German astronomer Johannes Kepler.
29 December 2016
Featuring: David Wootton, Ulinka Rublack, Adam Mosley
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
William and Caroline Herschel
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pioneering brother and sister who, between them, discovered Uranus, comets, double stars and infrared light at the end of the 18th century.
11 November 2021
Featuring: Monica Grady, Carolin Crawford, Jim Bennett
Theories of history (8)
Consequences of the Industrial Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the far-reaching consequences of the Industrial Revolution, which brought widespread social and intellectual change to Britain.
30 December 2010
Featuring: Jane Humphries, Emma Griffin, Lawrence Goldman
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Ibn Khaldun
Melvyn Bragg and guests Robert Hoyland, Robert Irwin and Hugh Kennedy discuss the life and ideas of the 14th-century Arab philosopher of history Ibn Khaldun.
4 February 2010
Featuring: Robert Hoyland, Robert Graham Irwin, Hugh N. Kennedy
Malthusianism
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Malthusianism, the influential theory of population growth first articulated by the Reverend Thomas Malthus in 1798.
23 June 2011
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Mark Philp, Emma Griffin
Progress
Melvyn Bragg examines whether while mankind has grown in years and knowledge, it has also progressed in terms of happiness and a truer understanding of the human condition.
18 November 1999
Featuring: Anthony O'Hear, Adam Phillips
Social Darwinism
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Social Darwinism, a school of thought which attempted to apply Darwin's ideas about evolution to human society.
20 February 2014
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Gregory Radick, Charlotte Sleigh
The Frankfurt School
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Frankfurt School, a group of influential German thinkers who argued that culture keeps people passive.
14 January 2010
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Esther Leslie, Raymond Geuss
The Industrial Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Industrial Revolution, a period of rapid technological development which brought widespread social and intellectual change to Britain.
23 December 2010
Featuring: Jeremy Black, Pat Hudson, William Ashworth
Philosophers of war (8)
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Clausewitz and On War
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss On War, the 19th-century treatise on the theory of warfare by the Prussian soldier Carl von Clausewitz.
17 May 2012
Featuring: Saul David, Hew Strachan, Beatrice Heuser
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Machiavelli and the Italian City States
Melvyn Bragg discusses the political philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli. Inspired by the model of Cesare Borgia, he wrote a notorious manual of power still read today.
9 December 2004
Featuring: Quentin Skinner, Evelyn Welch, Lisa Jardine
Peter Kropotkin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the Russian prince who became an anarchist and who argued that mutual aid was the key to evolution not survival of the fittest
24 February 2022
Featuring: Ruth Kinna, Lee Dugatkin, Simon Dixon
Sun Tzu and The Art of War
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Chinese military adviser Sun Tzu from the 6th century BC and the influential work of military strategy associated with him, The Art of War.
1 March 2018
Featuring: Hilde de Weerdt, Tim Barrett, Imre Galambos
Walter Benjamin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable philosopher and critic whose ideas, developed in the 1930s, became highly influential after his death while escaping the Holocaust.
10 February 2022
Featuring: Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger
William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience
Melvyn Bragg and guests Jonathan Ree, John Haldane and Gwen Griffith-Dickson discuss The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James.
13 May 2010
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, John Haldane, Gwen Griffith-Dickson
19th-century atheists (8)
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Harriet Martineau
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Harriet Martineau who wrote extensively in the C19th on a wide range of subjects including abolition, and is called the mother of sociology.
8 December 2016
Featuring: Valerie Sanders, Karen O'Brien, Ella Dzelzainis
Lenin
Melvyn Bragg investigates what drove the Soviet leader Lenin, and enabled him to develop a model to export communism and build an original political system that remained intact for over seventy years.
16 March 2000
Featuring: Robert Service, Vitali Vitaliev
Marx
Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.
14 July 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.
12 January 2017
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson
Peter Kropotkin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the Russian prince who became an anarchist and who argued that mutual aid was the key to evolution not survival of the fittest
24 February 2022
Featuring: Ruth Kinna, Lee Dugatkin, Simon Dixon
Proust
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.
17 April 2003
Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
20th-century atheists (8)
Alan Turing
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and life of the founder of computer science - whose work helped crack enemy codes in WW2 - and his exploration of artificial intelligence.
15 October 2020
Featuring: Leslie Ann Goldberg, Simon Schaffer, Andrew Hodges
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Camus
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Nobel Prize winning Algerian-French writer and existentialist philosopher Albert Camus.
3 January 2008
Featuring: Peter Dunwoodie, David Walker, Christina Howells
Iris Murdoch
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the growing prominence of the philosophy of one of the most celebrated novelists of the 20th century, who developed her ideas in response to WWII.
21 October 2021
Featuring: Anil Gomes, Anne Rowe, Miles Leeson
Lenin
Melvyn Bragg investigates what drove the Soviet leader Lenin, and enabled him to develop a model to export communism and build an original political system that remained intact for over seventy years.
16 March 2000
Featuring: Robert Service, Vitali Vitaliev
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
23 May 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene
Peter Kropotkin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the Russian prince who became an anarchist and who argued that mutual aid was the key to evolution not survival of the fittest
24 February 2022
Featuring: Ruth Kinna, Lee Dugatkin, Simon Dixon
Proust
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.
17 April 2003
Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser
Philosophers of technology (8)
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aldous Huxley's dystopian 1932 novel Brave New World and its vision of a future of test tube babies, free love and round-the-clock surveillance.
9 April 2009
Featuring: David Bradshaw, Daniel Pick, Michèle Barrett
Benjamin Franklin
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.
1 March 2012
Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Hannah Arendt
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Hannah Arendt who examined totalitarianism and politics and, when covering the Eichmann trial, explored 'the banality of evil'.
2 February 2017
Featuring: Lyndsey Stonebridge, Frisbee Sheffield, Robert Eaglestone
Marx
Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.
14 July 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones
Popper
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.
8 February 2007
Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright
Roger Bacon
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss medieval English scholar Roger Bacon, an early pioneer of science who became known as Doctor Mirabilis.
20 April 2017
Featuring: Jack Cunningham, Amanda Power, Elly Truitt
Walter Benjamin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable philosopher and critic whose ideas, developed in the 1930s, became highly influential after his death while escaping the Holocaust.
10 February 2022
Featuring: Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger
Social commentators (8)
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
Kierkegaard
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.
20 March 2008
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
23 May 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene
Milton
Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.
7 March 2002
Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden
Rousseau on Education
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rousseau's ideas on how to educate children so they retain their natural selves and are not corrupted by society.
10 October 2019
Featuring: Richard Whatmore, Caroline Warman, Denis McManus
Spinoza
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Spinoza whose profound and complex ideas about God had him celebrated as an atheist in the 18th century.
3 May 2007
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham
Walter Benjamin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable philosopher and critic whose ideas, developed in the 1930s, became highly influential after his death while escaping the Holocaust.
10 February 2022
Featuring: Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger
Victorian novels (8)
A Christmas Carol
From Bah Humbug to God Bless Us Every One: Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Charles Dickens' story of Scrooge's salvation by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet To Come.
16 December 2021
Featuring: Juliet John, Jon Mee, Dinah Birch
Heart of Darkness
Melvyn Bragg discusses Joseph Conrad's Novel, Heart of Darkness, a critique of colonialism at the turn of the century
15 February 2007
Featuring: Susan Jones, Robert Hampson, Laurence Davies
Jane Eyre
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, first published in 1847 under the pseudonym Currer Bell.
18 June 2015
Featuring: Dinah Birch, Karen O'Brien, Sara Lyons
Middlemarch
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss George Eliot's Study of Provincial Life, set before the Reform Act 1832 in a small, fictional town in the Midlands surrounded by farmland.
18 April 2018
Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Kathryn Hughes, John Bowen
Silas Marner
Melvyn Bragg and guests Rosemary Ashton, Dinah Birch and Valentine Cunningham discuss George Eliot's 1861 novel Silas Marner.
28 January 2010
Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Dinah Birch, Valentine Cunningham
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, which challenged Victorian morality and made Hardy's fortune when published in the 1890s.
5 May 2016
Featuring: Dinah Birch, Francis O'Gorman, Jane Thomas
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Anne Bronte's story of the mysterious Helen Graham who seeks a new independent life as an artist after escaping her abusive, alcoholic husband.
30 September 2021
Featuring: Alexandra Lewis, Marianne Thormählen, John Bowen
Wuthering Heights
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Emily Bronte's story of Heathcliff and Cathy, of love, hatred, revenge and self-destruction across two generations in a remote moorland home.
28 September 2017
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Bowen, Alexandra Lewis
Natural philosophers (8)
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
Heraclitus
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the ancient Greek thinker Heraclitus, immortalised by later scholars as the Weeping Philosopher.
8 December 2011
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Peter Adamson, James Warren
Johannes Kepler
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the German astronomer Johannes Kepler.
29 December 2016
Featuring: David Wootton, Ulinka Rublack, Adam Mosley
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Plato's Gorgias
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock
25 November 2021
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh
Robert Hooke
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Robert Hooke, the 17th-century scientist with a wide variety of interests from elasticity to microscopes who fell out with Newton.
18 February 2016
Featuring: David Wootton, Patricia Fara, Rob Iliffe
Roger Bacon
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss medieval English scholar Roger Bacon, an early pioneer of science who became known as Doctor Mirabilis.
20 April 2017
Featuring: Jack Cunningham, Amanda Power, Elly Truitt
British male essayists (8)
Auden
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss WH Auden's life and poetry from Europe before WWII, reflecting on his travels to Spain, China and Germany and the rise of totalitarianism.
19 December 2019
Featuring: Mark Ford, Janet Montefiore, Jeremy Noel-Tod
David Hume
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.
6 October 2011
Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris
Dickens
Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?
12 July 2001
Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen
Edward Gibbon
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the writer of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, one of the most celebrated works of its kind.
17 June 2021
Featuring: David Womersley, Charlotte Roberts, Karen O’Brien
Mill
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.
18 May 2006
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan
Pope
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the satirist Alexander Pope. One of the greatest poets of the English language, his brilliant satires have made him popular in our age but not in his own.
9 November 2006
Featuring: John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Valerie Rumbold
Popper
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.
8 February 2007
Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright
Wittgenstein
Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.
4 December 2003
Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn
History of logic (8)
David Hume
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.
6 October 2011
Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris
Galen
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Roman physician and medical theorist Galen.
10 October 2013
Featuring: Vivian Nutton, Helen King, Caroline Petit
History of logic
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the history of logic, the study of reasoning and argument.
21 October 2010
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Peter Millican, Rosanna Keefe
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Ockham's Razor
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosophical idea of Ockham’s Razor and the medieval philosopher who gave his name to it, William of Ockham.
31 May 2007
Featuring: Anthony Kenny, Marilyn Adams, Richard Alan Cross
Rhetoric
Melvyn Bragg discusses Rhetoric, the art of speaking which is an expression of inner virtue and also fundamental to ideas about democracy.
28 October 2004
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Thomas Healy, Ceri Sullivan
The Music of the Spheres
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the music of the spheres, the idea that the revolution of the planets generates a celestial harmony of profound beauty
19 June 2008
Featuring: Peter Forshaw, Jim Bennett, Angela Voss
Wittgenstein
Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.
4 December 2003
Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn
Philosophers of sexuality (8)
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Mill
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.
18 May 2006
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.
12 January 2017
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson
Sartre
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
7 October 2004
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells
Simone de Beauvoir
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.
22 October 2015
Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd
Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences (8)
Dorothy Hodgkin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work, ideas and life of the woman who won the 1964 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her work on the structures of vitamin B12 and penicillin.
3 October 2019
Featuring: Georgina Ferry, Judith Howard, Patricia Fara
Louis Pasteur
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Louis Pasteur, microbiologist, developer of vaccines, saviour of the French beer and wine industries and preserver of milk.
18 May 2017
Featuring: Andrew Mendelsohn, Anne Hardy, Michael Worboys
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
23 May 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene
Michael Faraday
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Michael Faraday, the most famous British scientist of the 19th century.
25 December 2015
Featuring: Geoffrey Cantor, Laura Herz, Frank James
Paul Dirac
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Bristolian theoretical physicist, ranked alongside Einstein by his peers, who won a Nobel for his work on quantum mechanics.
5 March 2020
Featuring: Graham Farmelo, Valerie Gibson, David Berman
Popper
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.
8 February 2007
Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright
Rutherford
Melvyn Bragg discusses Ernest Rutherford. He is seen as the father of nuclear science, a great charismatic figure who mapped the landscape of the sub-atomic world.
19 February 2004
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Jim Al-Khalili, Patricia Fara
The Needham Question
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Needham Question, which asks why China’s medieval technological advancement was overtaken by that of a relative backwater called Europe.
19 October 2006
Featuring: Chris Cullen, Tim Barrett, Frances Wood
Literary theorists (8)
Auden
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss WH Auden's life and poetry from Europe before WWII, reflecting on his travels to Spain, China and Germany and the rise of totalitarianism.
19 December 2019
Featuring: Mark Ford, Janet Montefiore, Jeremy Noel-Tod
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
Jorge Luis Borges
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges.
4 January 2007
Featuring: Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn
Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce's groundbreaking 1916 novel about growing up in Catholic Ireland.
26 November 2009
Featuring: Roy Foster, Katherine Mullin, Jeri Johnson
Milton
Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.
7 March 2002
Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden
Montaigne
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Michel de Montaigne. Best known for his influential Essays, Montaigne is regarded as the father of modern sceptical thought.
25 April 2013
Featuring: David Wootton, Terence Cave, Felicity Green
Seneca the Younger
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Seneca: philosopher, playwright, tutor to Nero, one of the first great writers born in the new Roman empire after the fall of the Republic.
23 February 2017
Featuring: Mary Beard, Catharine Edwards, Alessandro Schiesaro
Aesthetics (8)
Authenticity
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss what being oneself has meant to philosophers from Aristotle to Sartre and since and how compatible authenticity is with morality
14 March 2019
Featuring: Sarah Richmond, Denis McManus, Irene McMullin
Beauty
Melvyn Bragg discusses the qualities of beauty and the history of aesthetics. Is beauty inherent in things, or in the mind of the observer?
19 May 2005
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Susan James, Julian Baggini
Inspiration and Genius
Melvyn Bragg examines the true meaning of genius and whether it is born or made. What circumstances are necessary for the great leaps of consciousness that inspire the development of science and art?
15 June 2000
Featuring: Arthur I. Miller, Michael Howe, Juliet Mitchell
Modernist Utopias
Melvyn Bragg discusses the mad, bad world of modern utopias where babies are hatched from test tubes, where women live without men, where machines have taken over, and where the poor are exterminated.
10 March 2005
Featuring: John Carey, Steven Connor, Laura Marcus
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
Symmetry
Melvyn Bragg discusses symmetry in art and nature. From snowflakes and butterflies to the music of Bach and the poems of Pushkin.
19 April 2007
Featuring: Fay Dowker, Marcus du Sautoy, Ian Stewart
The Artist
Melvyn Bragg discusses the rise of the idea of the artist and the claims made for it, and examines the role that aristocratic patronage of the arts has played in changing the status of the artist.
28 March 2002
Featuring: Emma Barker, Thomas Healy, Tim Blanning
The Sublime
Melvyn Bragg discusses a transcendental idea that 18th century British artists, poets, philosophers and scientists seized upon and adapted to the intellectual and physical landscape.
12 February 2004
Featuring: Janet Todd, Annie Janowitz, Peter de Bolla
Existentialists (8)
Camus
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Nobel Prize winning Algerian-French writer and existentialist philosopher Albert Camus.
3 January 2008
Featuring: Peter Dunwoodie, David Walker, Christina Howells
Hannah Arendt
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Hannah Arendt who examined totalitarianism and politics and, when covering the Eichmann trial, explored 'the banality of evil'.
2 February 2017
Featuring: Lyndsey Stonebridge, Frisbee Sheffield, Robert Eaglestone
Kierkegaard
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.
20 March 2008
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.
12 January 2017
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson
Samuel Beckett
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the author of Waiting for Godot, who lived in Paris and wrote in French as he found that more difficult than writing in English
17 January 2019
Featuring: Steven Connor, Laura Salisbury, Mark Nixon
Sartre
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
7 October 2004
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells
Simone de Beauvoir
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.
22 October 2015
Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd
William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience
Melvyn Bragg and guests Jonathan Ree, John Haldane and Gwen Griffith-Dickson discuss The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James.
13 May 2010
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, John Haldane, Gwen Griffith-Dickson
Critics of Christianity (8)
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Frederick the Great
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Frederick II, king of Prussia from 1740 to 1786.
2 July 2015
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Katrin Kohl, Thomas Biskup
Hitler in History
Melvyn Bragg examines the debate between various historiographical theories. How do Intentionalist, Structralist and Marxist views of history explain events in Nazi Germany?
5 October 2000
Featuring: Ian Kershaw, Niall Ferguson, Mary Fulbrook
Hobbes
Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.
1 December 2005
Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.
12 January 2017
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson
Pliny the Younger
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Roman lawyer and statesman Pliny the Younger, whose letters offer a fascinating insight into his life and the ancient world.
12 December 2013
Featuring: Catharine Edwards, Roy Gibson, Alice König
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
Thomas Paine's Common Sense
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.
21 January 2016
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson
English Anglicans (8)
Darwin: On the Origins of Charles Darwin
Melvyn Bragg presents a series about the life and work of Charles Darwin. Darwin's early life and time at Cambridge, where his interests shifted from religion to natural science.
5 January 2009
Featuring: Jim Moore, Steve Jones, David Norman, Colin Higgins
Dickens
Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?
12 July 2001
Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen
Johnson
Melvyn Bragg discusses Samuel Johnson, a giant of 18th century literature, language and letters, and perhaps the most quotable Englishman to have ever lifted a pen.
27 October 2005
Featuring: John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Judith Hawley
Robert Hooke
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Robert Hooke, the 17th-century scientist with a wide variety of interests from elasticity to microscopes who fell out with Newton.
18 February 2016
Featuring: David Wootton, Patricia Fara, Rob Iliffe
Rudyard Kipling
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Rudyard Kipling, a writer sometimes described as the poet of empire.
16 October 2014
Featuring: Howard Booth, Daniel Karlin, Jan Montefiore
Swift's A Modest Proposal
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jonathan Swift's satirical 1729 pamphlet A Modest Proposal, which reveals much about attitudes to the Irish and the poor in 18th-Century Britain.
29 January 2009
Featuring: John Mullan, Judith Hawley, Ian McBride
The Death of Elizabeth I
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the death of Queen Elizabeth I and its immediate impact, as a foreign monarch became King in the face of plots and plague.
15 October 2009
Featuring: John Guy, Clare Jackson, Helen Hackett
Wilberforce
In an unusual edition of In Our Time, marking the 1807 Abolition of the Slave Trade, Melvyn Bragg leaves the studio to examine the life of William Wilberforce.
22 February 2007
Featuring
Social philosophy (8)
Altruism
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss altruism, described as “an unselfish attention to the needs of others” but how does this square with Darwin’s theory of Evolution?
23 November 2006
Featuring: Miranda Fricker, Richard Dawkins, John Dupré
Capitalism
Melvyn Bragg discusses the history of capitalism and examines whether we have witnessed its triumph or if we are only now learning the full costs and the social impact of its unfettered advance.
24 June 1999
Featuring: Anatole Kaletsky, Edward Luttwak
Evil
Melvyn Bragg discusses the notion of evil in western philosophy.
3 May 2001
Featuring: Jones Erwin, Stephen Mulhall, Margaret Atkins
Phenomenology
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosophical movement phenomenology.
22 January 2015
Featuring: Simon Glendinning, Joanna Hodge, Stephen Mulhall
The Frankfurt School
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Frankfurt School, a group of influential German thinkers who argued that culture keeps people passive.
14 January 2010
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Esther Leslie, Raymond Geuss
The Philosophy of Love
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosophy of love, a search for a completeness in human nature.
29 March 2001
Featuring: Roger Scruton, Angie Hobbs, Thomas Docherty
Utilitarianism
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss utilitarianism, a moral theory that assesses acts by their tendency to increase pleasure in the world and decrease the amount of pain.
11 June 2015
Featuring: Melissa Lane, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Brad Hooker
William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience
Melvyn Bragg and guests Jonathan Ree, John Haldane and Gwen Griffith-Dickson discuss The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James.
13 May 2010
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, John Haldane, Gwen Griffith-Dickson
Concepts in the philosophy of mind (8)
Cogito Ergo Sum
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss one of the most famous statements in philosophy, 'Cogito ergo sum', Rene Descartes' attempt to establish what we can truly know.
28 April 2011
Featuring: Susan James, John Cottingham, Stephen Mulhall
Consciousness
Melvyn Bragg examines why the elusiveness and impenetrability of consciousness continues to fascinate both philosophers and scientists. Is the human mind just not built to understand its own basis?
25 November 1999
Featuring: Ted Honderich, Roger Penrose
Ockham's Razor
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosophical idea of Ockham’s Razor and the medieval philosopher who gave his name to it, William of Ockham.
31 May 2007
Featuring: Anthony Kenny, Marilyn Adams, Richard Alan Cross
Phenomenology
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosophical movement phenomenology.
22 January 2015
Featuring: Simon Glendinning, Joanna Hodge, Stephen Mulhall
The Brain and Consciousness
Melvyn Bragg discusses how our increased knowledge of the functioning of the brain has changed our feelings about our own natures, and our approach to the behaviour and treatment of others.
19 November 1998
Featuring: Steven Rose, Dan Robinson
The Mind/Body Problem
Melvyn Bragg discusses the history of thought about the mind/body problem in philosophy. Does the mind rule the body or the body rule the mind? And where does the mind reside?
13 January 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Julian Baggini, Sue James
The Sublime
Melvyn Bragg discusses a transcendental idea that 18th century British artists, poets, philosophers and scientists seized upon and adapted to the intellectual and physical landscape.
12 February 2004
Featuring: Janet Todd, Annie Janowitz, Peter de Bolla
Time
Melvyn Bragg examines the history of mankind’s attempt to understand the nature of time. Does it exist independently of our perception of it, or is it merely a figment of our imagination?
30 December 1999
Featuring: Neil Johnson, Lee Smolin
Philosophy of life (8)
Epicureanism
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Epicureanism, the system of philosophy based on the teachings of Epicurus and founded in the 4th century BC.
7 February 2013
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, James Warren
Existentialism
Melvyn Bragg discusses existentialism, a twentieth century philosophy of everyday life concerned with the individual, and his or her place within the world.
28 June 2001
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Christina Howells, Simon Critchley
Free Will(500th programme)
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the problem of free will - the extent to which we are able to choose our actions.
10 March 2011
Featuring: Simon Blackburn, Helen Beebee, Galen Strawson
Guilt
Melvyn Bragg discusses the moral conscience and take a long hard look at the idea of guilt.
1 November 2007
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Miranda Fricker, Oliver Davies
Humanism
Melvyn Bragg examines what happened to Humanism after its invention by Cicero in the first century BC. What does humanism actually mean and is it still a classical force in contemporary ideas?
8 February 2001
Featuring: Tony Davies, Lisa Jardine, Simon Goldhill
Nihilism
Melvyn Bragg explores the history of Nihilism, a philosophy associated with Nietzsche that claims truth and morality are illusory. Has anything positive come out of the philosophy of ‘nothing’?
16 November 2000
Featuring: Rob Hopkins, Raymond Tallis, Catherine Belsey
Progress
Melvyn Bragg examines whether while mankind has grown in years and knowledge, it has also progressed in terms of happiness and a truer understanding of the human condition.
18 November 1999
Featuring: Anthony O'Hear, Adam Phillips
Stoicism
Melvyn Bragg discusses Stoicism, the third great philosophy of the Ancient World, which had a great influence on the Roman Empire.
3 March 2005
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Jonathan Rée, David Sedley
Main topic articles (8)
Education
Melvyn Bragg discusses the history education and examines whether its modern purpose is to teach us the nature of reality, or to give us the tools to deal with it.
4 November 1999
Featuring: Mary Warnock, Ted Wragg
History and Understanding the Past
Melvyn Bragg examines whether we can ever predict the future by understanding the past. What kind of lessons is it possible for leaders, governments or people to take from history?
30 March 2000
Featuring: Richard J. Evans, Eric Hobsbawm
Language and the Mind
Melvyn Bragg discusses whether the formation of language is innate or cultural and examines how ideas about language are being radically challenged and altered in the 20th century.
11 February 1999
Featuring: Jonathan Miller, Steven Pinker
Mathematics
Melvyn Bragg examines the way perceptions of the importance of mathematics have fluctuated in the 20th century and what mathematics can reveal about how life began, and how it might continue.
6 May 1999
Featuring: Ian Stewart, Brian Butterworth
Mathematics and Platonism
Melvyn Bragg discusses whether mathematics is a process of invention or of discovery. And if it is a discovery, how can we be sure that the mathematic we think we have discovered is the right one?
11 January 2001
Featuring: Ian Stewart, Margaret Wertheim, John D. Barrow
Maths and Storytelling
Melvyn Bragg discusses the similar origins of mathematics and storytelling which both require a shape and structure to make any sense. But is it possible to apply mathematical logic to literature?
30 September 1999
Featuring: John Allen Paulos, Marina Warner
Nature
Melvyn Bragg discusses the history of man’s attempt to define nature, including the Ancient Greek’s quest to demonstrate the wrath of the gods and the Romantics who set out to philosophise it.
10 July 2003
Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Roger Scruton, Karen Edwards
Time
Melvyn Bragg examines the history of mankind’s attempt to understand the nature of time. Does it exist independently of our perception of it, or is it merely a figment of our imagination?
30 December 1999
Featuring: Neil Johnson, Lee Smolin
Novels adapted into radio programs (7)
Animal Farm
4 Extra Debut. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss George Orwell's Animal Farm, which he struggled to publish in WW2 as the USSR was an ally. From 2016.
29 September 2016
Featuring: Steven Connor, Mary Vincent, Robert Colls
Frankenstein
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Mary Shelley's story of Victor Frankenstein and the creature he makes from cadavers and then rejects - only for the monster to take his revenge
16 May 2019
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Michael Rossington, Jane Thomas
Great Gatsby
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the great American novels of the 20th Century, where inexplicably rich Jay Gatsby aims to win Daisy Buchanan from her millionaire husband.
14 January 2021
Featuring: Sarah Churchwell, Philip McGowan, William Blazek
Moby Dick
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Moby-Dick (1851) by Herman Melville, the story of Ahab and the white whale, the most popular of around 1,000 ideas that listeners submitted.
7 December 2017
Featuring: Bridget Bennett, Katie McGettigan, Graham Thompson
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Orwell's dystopian novel where the state rewrites history, war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength - and Big Brother is watching you
15 September 2022
Featuring: David Dwan, Lisa Mullen, John Bowen
Robinson Crusoe
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Daniel Defoe's seminal novel Robinson Crusoe. Published in 1719, it was an immediate success and is considered the classic adventure story.
22 December 2011
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Judith Hawley, Bob Owens
Tristram Shandy
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Laurence Sterne's comic novel Tristram Shandy.
24 April 2014
Featuring: Judith Hawley, John Mullan, Mary Newbould
18th-century essayists (7)
David Hume
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.
6 October 2011
Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Mary Wollstonecraft
Melvyn Bragg and guests John Mullan, Karen O'Brien and Barbara Taylor discuss the life and ideas of the pioneering British Enlightenment thinker Mary Wollstonecraft.
31 December 2009
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Mullan, Barbara Taylor
Pope
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the satirist Alexander Pope. One of the greatest poets of the English language, his brilliant satires have made him popular in our age but not in his own.
9 November 2006
Featuring: John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Valerie Rumbold
Writers from London (7)
Chaucer
Melvyn Bragg discusses Geoffrey Chaucer who immortalised the medieval pilgrimage and the diversity of 14th century English society, in his Canterbury Tales.
9 February 2006
Featuring: Carolyne Larrington, Helen Cooper, Ardis Butterfield
Christina Rossetti
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Victorian poet Christina Rossetti.
1 December 2011
Featuring: Dinah Birch, Rhian Williams, Nicholas Shrimpton
Dickens
Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?
12 July 2001
Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen
Fanny Burney
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the 18th-century writer Fanny Burney, also known as Frances D'Arblay and Frances Burney, best known for her novel Evelina.
23 April 2015
Featuring: Nicole Pohl, Judith Hawley, John Mullan
Johnson
Melvyn Bragg discusses Samuel Johnson, a giant of 18th century literature, language and letters, and perhaps the most quotable Englishman to have ever lifted a pen.
27 October 2005
Featuring: John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Judith Hawley
Milton
Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.
7 March 2002
Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden
Polidori's The Vampyre
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the myths that gave rise to this novella from 1819 by Byron's physician, John Polidori, and the works such as Bram Stoker's Dracula it inspired.
07 April 2022
Featuring: Nick Groom, Samantha George, Martyn Rady
Lecturers (7)
Bergson and Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.
9 May 2019
Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair
Dickens
Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?
12 July 2001
Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen
Frederick Douglass
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the prominent abolitionist, who in 1845 told his story in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.
9 February 2018
Featuring: Celeste-Marie Bernier, Karen Salt, Nicholas Guyatt
Jorge Luis Borges
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges.
4 January 2007
Featuring: Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Peter Kropotkin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the Russian prince who became an anarchist and who argued that mutual aid was the key to evolution not survival of the fittest
24 February 2022
Featuring: Ruth Kinna, Lee Dugatkin, Simon Dixon
Thoreau and the American Idyll
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the American 19th century writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau
15 January 2009
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Tim Morris, Stephen Fender
English Renaissance plays (7)
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas behind Shakespeare's comedy with its intertwining plots of royal marriage, crossed lovers, quarreling fairies and rude mechanicals
18 April 2019
Featuring: Helen Hackett, Tom Healy, Alison Findlay
Elizabethan Revenge
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss why revenge tragedy was so popular with Elizabethan theatre goers, from Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy to Shakespeare's Hamlet.
18 June 2009
Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Julie Sanders, Janet Clare
Hamlet
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the inspiration for Shakespeare's Hamlet, the play's context and meaning, and why it has fascinated audiences from its first performance.
28 December 2017
Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Carol Rutter, Sonia Massai
Lear
Melvyn Bragg discusses Shakespeare’s King Lear, a shocking and violent vision of a broken family in a godless world.
28 February 2008
Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Katherine Duncan-Jones, Catherine Belsey
Macbeth
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Shakespeare's tragedy of ambition where Macbeth saves his King from one revolt only to murder and replace him, to fulfil a witches' prophecy.
1 October 2020
Featuring: Emma Smith, Kiernan Ryan, David Schalkwyk
Romeo and Juliet
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poetry and power of Shakespeare's tragedy of two young lovers in Verona, their families divided by a bitter feud
17 February 2022
Featuring: Helen Hackett, Paul Prescott, Emma Smith
The Tempest
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss The Tempest, one of Shakespeare's last and richest plays.
14 November 2013
Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Erin Sullivan, Katherine Duncan-Jones
Plays adapted into operas (7)
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas behind Shakespeare's comedy with its intertwining plots of royal marriage, crossed lovers, quarreling fairies and rude mechanicals
18 April 2019
Featuring: Helen Hackett, Tom Healy, Alison Findlay
Hamlet
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the inspiration for Shakespeare's Hamlet, the play's context and meaning, and why it has fascinated audiences from its first performance.
28 December 2017
Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Carol Rutter, Sonia Massai
Lear
Melvyn Bragg discusses Shakespeare’s King Lear, a shocking and violent vision of a broken family in a godless world.
28 February 2008
Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Katherine Duncan-Jones, Catherine Belsey
Macbeth
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Shakespeare's tragedy of ambition where Macbeth saves his King from one revolt only to murder and replace him, to fulfil a witches' prophecy.
1 October 2020
Featuring: Emma Smith, Kiernan Ryan, David Schalkwyk
Romeo and Juliet
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poetry and power of Shakespeare's tragedy of two young lovers in Verona, their families divided by a bitter feud
17 February 2022
Featuring: Helen Hackett, Paul Prescott, Emma Smith
The Bacchae
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great tragedy by Euripides, where Dionysus takes revenge on Thebans who denied his divinity, their king torn to shreds by his mother.
18 March 2021
Featuring: Edith Hall, Emily Wilson, Rosie Wyles
The Tempest
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss The Tempest, one of Shakespeare's last and richest plays.
14 November 2013
Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Erin Sullivan, Katherine Duncan-Jones
Critics of work and the work ethic (7)
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
John Ruskin
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and work of John Ruskin, art and social critic, and one of the most influential figures of the Victorian era.
31 March 2005
Featuring: Dinah Birch, Keith Hanley, Stefan Collini
Marx
Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.
14 July 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.
12 January 2017
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson
Thoreau and the American Idyll
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the American 19th century writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau
15 January 2009
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Tim Morris, Stephen Fender
Walter Benjamin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable philosopher and critic whose ideas, developed in the 1930s, became highly influential after his death while escaping the Holocaust.
10 February 2022
Featuring: Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger
Weber's The Protestant Ethic
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Max Weber's book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
27 March 2014
Featuring: Peter Ghosh, Sam Whimster, Linda Woodhead
Bisexual writers (7)
Catullus
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poetry of Catullus - some of the greatest verse of his time, and some of the most scurrilous - and his influence on Roman and later poetry
11 January 2020
Featuring: Gail Trimble, Simon Smith, Maria Wyke
Colette
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the novels and life of one of the most remarkable writers of the last century, whose Claudine series was first published under her husband's name.
27 January 2022
Featuring: Diana Holmes, Michèle Roberts, Belinda Jack
George Sand
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work and life of Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin who in C19th France wrote many extremely successful novels, under the name George Sand
6 February 2020
Featuring: Belinda Jack, Angela Ryan, Nigel Harkness
Oscar Wilde
Melvyn Bragg discusses Oscar Wilde, the Aesthetes and his literary legacy. Was Wilde a reactionary - the last of the romantics - or was he the midwife to modernism?
6 December 2001
Featuring: Valentine Cunningham, Regenia Gagnier, Neil Sammells
Siegfried Sassoon
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the war poet Siegfried Sassoon; a homosexual war hero who became a bitter opponent of the First World War and a devout Catholic.
7 June 2007
Featuring: Jean Moorcroft Wilson, Fran Brearton, Max Egremont
Simone de Beauvoir
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.
22 October 2015
Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd
Wittgenstein
Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.
4 December 2003
Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn
Victorian novelists (7)
Dickens
Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?
12 July 2001
Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen
Elizabeth Gaskell's novel North and South
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, who set her 1855 novel in a version of Manchester she called Milton in the county of Darkshire.
9 March 2017
Featuring: Sally Shuttleworth, Dinah Birch, Jenny Uglow
Harriet Martineau
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Harriet Martineau who wrote extensively in the C19th on a wide range of subjects including abolition, and is called the mother of sociology.
8 December 2016
Featuring: Valerie Sanders, Karen O'Brien, Ella Dzelzainis
Oscar Wilde
Melvyn Bragg discusses Oscar Wilde, the Aesthetes and his literary legacy. Was Wilde a reactionary - the last of the romantics - or was he the midwife to modernism?
6 December 2001
Featuring: Valentine Cunningham, Regenia Gagnier, Neil Sammells
Rudyard Kipling
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Rudyard Kipling, a writer sometimes described as the poet of empire.
16 October 2014
Featuring: Howard Booth, Daniel Karlin, Jan Montefiore
Thomas Hardy's Poetry
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hardy's poems, which he prized far above the novels which made him famous and rich, and his ambition to be ranked alongside Shelley and Byron.
13 January 2022
Featuring: Mark Ford, Jane Thomas, Tim Armstrong
William Morris
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss some of the many aspects of William Morris: his activism, poetry and prose and his ideas on arts, crafts and work in an industrial world.
5 July 2018
Featuring: Ingrid Hanson, Marcus Waithe, Jane Thomas
Philosophers of love (7)
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Kierkegaard
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.
20 March 2008
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt
Plato's Gorgias
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock
25 November 2021
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
Socrates
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.
27 September 2007
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett
The Buddha
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life of Siddhartha Gautama, the originator of Buddhism, and examines why his teachings have now become one of the fastest growing religions of the Western world.
14 March 2002
Featuring: Peter Harvey, Kate Crosby, Mahinda Deegalle
Thoreau and the American Idyll
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the American 19th century writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau
15 January 2009
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Tim Morris, Stephen Fender
Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (7)
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Gauss, 'prince of mathematicians', including those on number theory, geometry, probability theory, astronomy and electromagnetism.
30 November 2017
Featuring: Marcus du Sautoy, Colva Roney-Dougal, Nick Evans
Darwin: On the Origins of Charles Darwin
Melvyn Bragg presents a series about the life and work of Charles Darwin. Darwin's early life and time at Cambridge, where his interests shifted from religion to natural science.
5 January 2009
Featuring: Jim Moore, Steve Jones, David Norman, Colin Higgins
Humboldt
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Prussian naturalist and explorer, Alexander Von Humboldt. A hero in South America; Charles Darwin described him as ‘the greatest scientific traveller who ever lived’.
28 September 2006
Featuring: Jason Wilson, Patricia Fara, Jim Secord
Michael Faraday
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Michael Faraday, the most famous British scientist of the 19th century.
25 December 2015
Featuring: Geoffrey Cantor, Laura Herz, Frank James
Pierre-Simon Laplace
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great French mathematician who tackled questions on the stability of the Solar System and planet rotation and devised the basis for metrication
8 April 2021
Featuring: Marcus du Sautoy, Timothy Gowers, Colva Roney-Dougal
Thomas Edison
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of Thomas Edison, one of the great inventors and cultural figures of modern America.
9 December 2010
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Kathleen Burk, Iwan Morus
William and Caroline Herschel
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pioneering brother and sister who, between them, discovered Uranus, comets, double stars and infrared light at the end of the 18th century.
11 November 2021
Featuring: Monica Grady, Carolin Crawford, Jim Bennett
Honorary members of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences (7)
Benjamin Franklin
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.
1 March 2012
Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Gauss, 'prince of mathematicians', including those on number theory, geometry, probability theory, astronomy and electromagnetism.
30 November 2017
Featuring: Marcus du Sautoy, Colva Roney-Dougal, Nick Evans
Humboldt
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Prussian naturalist and explorer, Alexander Von Humboldt. A hero in South America; Charles Darwin described him as ‘the greatest scientific traveller who ever lived’.
28 September 2006
Featuring: Jason Wilson, Patricia Fara, Jim Secord
Louis Pasteur
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Louis Pasteur, microbiologist, developer of vaccines, saviour of the French beer and wine industries and preserver of milk.
18 May 2017
Featuring: Andrew Mendelsohn, Anne Hardy, Michael Worboys
Michael Faraday
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Michael Faraday, the most famous British scientist of the 19th century.
25 December 2015
Featuring: Geoffrey Cantor, Laura Herz, Frank James
Tolstoy
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and times of the 19th century Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, whose novels such as War and Peace gave expression to the compelling moral and social questions of their day.
25 April 2002
Featuring: A. N. Wilson, Catriona Kelly, Sarah Hudspith
William and Caroline Herschel
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pioneering brother and sister who, between them, discovered Uranus, comets, double stars and infrared light at the end of the 18th century.
11 November 2021
Featuring: Monica Grady, Carolin Crawford, Jim Bennett
Intellectual history (7)
Al-Kindi
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Al-Kindi, often described as the first philosopher in the Arabic tradition.
28 June 2012
Featuring: Hugh Kennedy, James Montgomery, Amira Bennison
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
23 May 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene
Phenomenology
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosophical movement phenomenology.
22 January 2015
Featuring: Simon Glendinning, Joanna Hodge, Stephen Mulhall
Pythagoras
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and influence of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans.
10 December 2009
Featuring: Ian Stewart, Serafina Cuomo, John O'Connor
Rhetoric
Melvyn Bragg discusses Rhetoric, the art of speaking which is an expression of inner virtue and also fundamental to ideas about democracy.
28 October 2004
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Thomas Healy, Ceri Sullivan
Wittgenstein
Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.
4 December 2003
Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn
English Roman Catholics (7)
Margery Kempe and English Mysticism
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Margery Kempe (1373-1438), the English mystic who went to Jerusalem and dictated her life story, said to be the first autobiography in English.
2 June 2016
Featuring: Miri Rubin, Katherine Lewis, Anthony Bale
Pope
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the satirist Alexander Pope. One of the greatest poets of the English language, his brilliant satires have made him popular in our age but not in his own.
9 November 2006
Featuring: John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Valerie Rumbold
Saint Cuthbert
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life of the Northumbrian monk, priest and hermit who lived on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne and became one of England's most revered saints.
28 January 2021
Featuring: Jane Hawkes, Sarah Foot, John Hines
Siegfried Sassoon
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the war poet Siegfried Sassoon; a homosexual war hero who became a bitter opponent of the First World War and a devout Catholic.
7 June 2007
Featuring: Jean Moorcroft Wilson, Fran Brearton, Max Egremont
St Hilda
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss St Hilda, who led a large and influential network of monasteries in 7th century Britain.
5 April 2007
Featuring: John Blair, Rosemary Cramp, Sarah Foot
The Venerable Bede
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Venerable Bede, who revolutionised history and scholarship, and became adopted by Rome as the last of the founding fathers of Christian religion.
25 November 2004
Featuring: Richard Gameson, Sarah Foot, Michelle Brown
Thomas Becket
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Becket, chancellor turned archbishop, who was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral and whose tomb became a centre of pilgrimage across Europe.
14 December 2017
Featuring: Laura Ashe, Michael Staunton, Danica Summerlin
English male dramatists and playwrights (7)
Auden
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss WH Auden's life and poetry from Europe before WWII, reflecting on his travels to Spain, China and Germany and the rise of totalitarianism.
19 December 2019
Featuring: Mark Ford, Janet Montefiore, Jeremy Noel-Tod
Dickens
Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?
12 July 2001
Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen
Marlowe
Melvyn Bragg discusses Christopher Marlowe; a forger, a brawler, a spy, but above all a playwright, a poet and the most celebrated writer of his generation.
7 July 2005
Featuring: Katherine Duncan-Jones, Jonathan Bate, Emma J. Smith
Milton
Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.
7 March 2002
Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden
Shakespeare and Literary Criticism
Melvyn Bragg discusses the enduring popular and academic appeal of Shakespeare and examines whether literary criticism and the academic institution ruins the pleasure of reading.
4 March 1999
Featuring: Harold Bloom, Jacqueline Rose
Shakespeare's Life
Melvyn Bragg discusses what we know about the life of William Shakespeare, a tantalising conundrum that has exercised minds since the day the playwright died.
15 March 2001
Featuring: Katherine Duncan-Jones, John Sutherland, Grace Ioppolo
Shakespeare's Work
Melvyn Bragg discusses whether the work of William Shakespeare is 'not of an age but for all time' or increasingly irrelevant museum pieces embalmed in out of reach language.
11 May 2000
Featuring: Frank Kermode, Michael Bogdanov, Germaine Greer
Evolutionary biology (7)
Chance and Design
Melvyn Bragg discusses the questions and theories surrounding the idea of a grand design in the universe. Can the concept of the randomness of evolution be compatible with a belief in God?
13 February 2003
Featuring: Simon Conway Morris, Sandy Knapp, John Brooke
Evolution
Melvyn Bragg examines the future of gene therapy and advances in evolutionary biology. Could electronic devices discover the means of self-replication, and what would be the consequences?
15 April 1999
Featuring: John Maynard Smith, Colin Tudge
Evolutionary Psychology
Melvyn Bragg explores the basis for the idea of Evolutionary Psychology and the context for its development as a discipline. What can it tell us about how we behave, and can it be trusted?
2 November 2000
Featuring: Janet Radcliffe Richards, Nicholas Humphrey, Steven Rose
Genetic Mutation
Melvyn Bragg discusses mutation in genetics and evolution, unlocking the secrets of life and death.
6 December 2007
Featuring: Steve Jones, Adrian Woolfson, Linda Partridge
Hybrids
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how some genetically different parents - from different species - can have offspring and what that says about the origin and evolution of species
31 October 2019
Featuring: Sandra Knapp, Nicola Nadeau, Steve Jones
The Evolution of Teeth
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss ideas about the origins of teeth, their link to hard scales on fish such as sharks and why some species regenerate theirs but humans do not.
11 April 2019
Featuring: Gareth Fraser, Zerina Johanson, Philip Donoghue
The Origins of Life
Melvyn Bragg discusses how the world’s first organic matter originated, nearly four billion years ago. What is the single common ancestor from which all living matter on our planet derives?
23 September 2004
Featuring: Richard Dawkins, Richard Corfield, Linda Partridge
Catholic philosophers (7)
Blaise Pascal
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the French polymath Blaise Pascal.
19 September 2013
Featuring: David Wootton, Michael Moriarty, Michela Massimi
Erasmus
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the Dutch humanist scholar Desiderius Erasmus, one of the most significant figures of the Renaissance.
9 February 2012
Featuring: Diarmaid MacCulloch, Eamon Duffy, Jill Kraye
Hildegard of Bingen
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the medieval mystic, composer and writer Hildegard of Bingen.
26 June 2014
Featuring: Miri Rubin, William Flynn, Almut Suerbaum
Montaigne
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Michel de Montaigne. Best known for his influential Essays, Montaigne is regarded as the father of modern sceptical thought.
25 April 2013
Featuring: David Wootton, Terence Cave, Felicity Green
Roger Bacon
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss medieval English scholar Roger Bacon, an early pioneer of science who became known as Doctor Mirabilis.
20 April 2017
Featuring: Jack Cunningham, Amanda Power, Elly Truitt
Rousseau on Education
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rousseau's ideas on how to educate children so they retain their natural selves and are not corrupted by society.
10 October 2019
Featuring: Richard Whatmore, Caroline Warman, Denis McManus
St Thomas Aquinas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss St Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic Church's foremost western philosopher and theologian.
17 September 2009
Featuring: Martin Palmer, John Haldane, Annabel Brett
Simple living advocates (7)
Benjamin Franklin
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.
1 March 2012
Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara
Horace
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Horace, one of the greatest poets of his age, the origin of phrases such as carpe diem, nil desperandum and dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.
15 November 2018
Featuring: Emily Gowers, William Fitzgerald, Ellen O'Gorman
Rousseau on Education
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rousseau's ideas on how to educate children so they retain their natural selves and are not corrupted by society.
10 October 2019
Featuring: Richard Whatmore, Caroline Warman, Denis McManus
Rumi's Poetry
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poetry of Rumi, the Persian scholar and Sufi mystic of the 13th century, whose great poetic works are the Masnavi and the Divan.
11 February 2016
Featuring: Alan Williams, Carole Hillenbrand, Lloyd Ridgeon
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
The Buddha
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life of Siddhartha Gautama, the originator of Buddhism, and examines why his teachings have now become one of the fastest growing religions of the Western world.
14 March 2002
Featuring: Peter Harvey, Kate Crosby, Mahinda Deegalle
Thoreau and the American Idyll
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the American 19th century writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau
15 January 2009
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Tim Morris, Stephen Fender
20th-century French philosophers (7)
Bergson and Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.
9 May 2019
Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair
Camus
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Nobel Prize winning Algerian-French writer and existentialist philosopher Albert Camus.
3 January 2008
Featuring: Peter Dunwoodie, David Walker, Christina Howells
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
23 May 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene
Proust
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.
17 April 2003
Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser
Sartre
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
7 October 2004
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells
Simone Weil
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil. Admired by Albert Camus and Iris Murdoch, she achieved a great deal in her short life.
15 November 2012
Featuring: Beatrice Han-Pile, Stephen Plant, David Levy
Simone de Beauvoir
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.
22 October 2015
Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd
People of the Elizabethan era (7)
Marlowe
Melvyn Bragg discusses Christopher Marlowe; a forger, a brawler, a spy, but above all a playwright, a poet and the most celebrated writer of his generation.
7 July 2005
Featuring: Katherine Duncan-Jones, Jonathan Bate, Emma J. Smith
Mary, Queen of Scots
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, who might have united the French, English and Scottish thrones.
19 January 2017
Featuring: David Forsyth, Anna Groundwater, John Guy
Shakespeare and Literary Criticism
Melvyn Bragg discusses the enduring popular and academic appeal of Shakespeare and examines whether literary criticism and the academic institution ruins the pleasure of reading.
4 March 1999
Featuring: Harold Bloom, Jacqueline Rose
Shakespeare's Life
Melvyn Bragg discusses what we know about the life of William Shakespeare, a tantalising conundrum that has exercised minds since the day the playwright died.
15 March 2001
Featuring: Katherine Duncan-Jones, John Sutherland, Grace Ioppolo
Shakespeare's Work
Melvyn Bragg discusses whether the work of William Shakespeare is 'not of an age but for all time' or increasingly irrelevant museum pieces embalmed in out of reach language.
11 May 2000
Featuring: Frank Kermode, Michael Bogdanov, Germaine Greer
The Death of Elizabeth I
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the death of Queen Elizabeth I and its immediate impact, as a foreign monarch became King in the face of plots and plague.
15 October 2009
Featuring: John Guy, Clare Jackson, Helen Hackett
William Cecil
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and influence of the 1st Baron Burghley, Elizabeth I's powerful Secretary of State who advanced England's interests throughout her reign
7 March 2019
Featuring: Diarmaid MacCulloch, Susan Doran, John Guy
French Roman Catholics (7)
Germaine de Staël
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas, works and life of Germaine de Stael (1766-1817), a literary critic, author, opponent of Napoleon and developer of Romanticism.
16 November 2017
Featuring: Catriona Seth, Alison Finch, Katherine Astbury
Lamarck and Natural Selection
Melvyn Bragg discusses Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, the 18th century French scientist, and his theory of Natural Selection. Who was he and how far did he pave the way for Darwin?
26 December 2003
Featuring: Sandy Knapp, Steve Jones, Simon Conway Morris
Louis Pasteur
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Louis Pasteur, microbiologist, developer of vaccines, saviour of the French beer and wine industries and preserver of milk.
18 May 2017
Featuring: Andrew Mendelsohn, Anne Hardy, Michael Worboys
Marie Antoinette
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Austrian princess who, while still a child, married the future Louis XVI of France only to face hostility and death under the French Revolution.
8 November 2018
Featuring: Catriona Seth, Katherine Astbury, David McCallam
Montesquieu
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of the French political philosopher (1689-1755) whose work on liberty and republicanism, banned at home, influenced the US constitution.
14 June 2018
Featuring: Richard Bourke, Rachel Hammersley, Richard Whatmore
Napoleon and Wellington
Melvyn Bragg discusses the comparative histories of Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington, two titans of nineteenth century history.
25 October 2001
Featuring: Andrew Roberts, Mike Broers, Belinda Beaton
Tocqueville: Democracy in America
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alexis de Tocqueville and his study of the American democratic system, written as an example to France of how democracy might develop there.
22 March 2018
Featuring: Robert Gildea, Susan-Mary Grant, Jeremy Jennings
Islamic philosophers (7)
Al-Biruni
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Central Asian polymath al-Biruni and his 11th-century book India, one of the first scholarly works about the country.
10 June 2010
Featuring: James Montgomery, Hugh Kennedy, Amira Bennison
Al-Ghazali
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Islamic scholar Al-Ghazali, one of the most significant and influential philosophers of the Middle Ages.
19 March 2015
Featuring: Peter Adamson, Carole Hillenbrand, Robert Gleave
Al-Kindi
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Al-Kindi, often described as the first philosopher in the Arabic tradition.
28 June 2012
Featuring: Hugh Kennedy, James Montgomery, Amira Bennison
Averroes
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Averroes who worked to reconcile the theology of Islam with the rationality of Aristotle, achieving both fame and infamy.
5 October 2006
Featuring: Amira Bennison, Peter Adamson, Anthony Kenny
Avicenna
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Avicenna, among the most important philosophers in the history of Islam.
8 November 2007
Featuring: Peter Adamson, Amira Bennison, Nader El-Bizri
Ibn Khaldun
Melvyn Bragg and guests Robert Hoyland, Robert Irwin and Hugh Kennedy discuss the life and ideas of the 14th-century Arab philosopher of history Ibn Khaldun.
4 February 2010
Featuring: Robert Hoyland, Robert Graham Irwin, Hugh N. Kennedy
Rumi's Poetry
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poetry of Rumi, the Persian scholar and Sufi mystic of the 13th century, whose great poetic works are the Masnavi and the Divan.
11 February 2016
Featuring: Alan Williams, Carole Hillenbrand, Lloyd Ridgeon
British social commentators (7)
David Hume
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.
6 October 2011
Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris
Dickens
Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?
12 July 2001
Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen
Edmund Burke
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke, whose views on revolution in America and France were hugely influential.
3 June 2010
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Richard Bourke, John Keane
Mill
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.
18 May 2006
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan
Popper
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.
8 February 2007
Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright
Thomas Paine's Common Sense
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.
21 January 2016
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson
Wittgenstein
Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.
4 December 2003
Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn
Physical cosmology (7)
Dark Energy
Melvyn Bragg discusses the recently discovered, and mysteriously named, 'dark energy' which may make up 70% of the universe.
17 March 2005
Featuring: Martin Rees, Carolin Crawford, Roger Penrose
Dark matter
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss dark matter, the mysterious and invisible substance that is believed to make up most of the universe.
12 March 2015
Featuring: Carolin Crawford, Gresham Professor of Astronomy Carlos Frenk, Anne Green
Grand unified theory
Melvyn Bragg examines 20th century’s physics’ search for one theory that can explain the behaviour of the smallest particle as well as the movements of the largest planets in the Universe.
24 February 2000
Featuring: Brian Greene, Martin Rees
The Age of the Universe
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss a question which has obsessed cosmologists for millennia: how old is the Universe?
3 March 2011
Featuring: Martin Rees, Carolin Crawford, Carlos Frenk
The Multiverse
Melvyn Bragg and guests will be leaving the studio, the planet and indeed, the universe to take a tour of the Multiverse
21 February 2008
Featuring: Martin Rees, Fay Dowker, Bernard Carr
The Universe's Origins
Melvyn Bragg examines the way thinking about the origins of the universe changed in the 20th century. Are we any closer to knowing whether other worlds exist and how our planet came into being?
20 May 1999
Featuring: Martin Rees, Paul Davies
The Universe's Shape
Melvyn Bragg discusses shape, size and topology of the universe and examines theories about its expansion. If it is already infinite, how can it be getting any bigger? And is there really only one?
7 February 2002
Featuring: Martin Rees, Julian Barbour, Janna Levin
17th-century English male writers (7)
George Fox and the Quakers
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the foundation of the Religious Society of Friends, otherwise known as the Quakers, in the 17th century.
5 April 2012
Featuring: Justin Champion, John Coffey, Kate Peters
Hobbes
Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.
1 December 2005
Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett
Milton
Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.
7 March 2002
Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden
Robert Boyle
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Robert Boyle, a pioneering scientist and one of the first Fellows of the Royal Society.
12 June 2014
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Michael Hunter, Anna Marie Roos
Shakespeare and Literary Criticism
Melvyn Bragg discusses the enduring popular and academic appeal of Shakespeare and examines whether literary criticism and the academic institution ruins the pleasure of reading.
4 March 1999
Featuring: Harold Bloom, Jacqueline Rose
Shakespeare's Life
Melvyn Bragg discusses what we know about the life of William Shakespeare, a tantalising conundrum that has exercised minds since the day the playwright died.
15 March 2001
Featuring: Katherine Duncan-Jones, John Sutherland, Grace Ioppolo
Shakespeare's Work
Melvyn Bragg discusses whether the work of William Shakespeare is 'not of an age but for all time' or increasingly irrelevant museum pieces embalmed in out of reach language.
11 May 2000
Featuring: Frank Kermode, Michael Bogdanov, Germaine Greer
Social theories (7)
Anarchism
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Anarchism and why its political ideas became synonymous with chaos and disorder.
7 December 2006
Featuring: John Keane, Ruth Kinna, Peter Marshall
Existentialism
Melvyn Bragg discusses existentialism, a twentieth century philosophy of everyday life concerned with the individual, and his or her place within the world.
28 June 2001
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Christina Howells, Simon Critchley
Feminism
Melvyn Bragg discusses the rise of Feminism and the subsequent empowerment of women. What have been the most lasting changes for women in the last century and what is there still left to achieve?
7 January 1999
Featuring: Helena Cronin, Germaine Greer
Multiculturalism
Melvyn Bragg examines whether it is possible to define how attitudes to race and identity have changed in the 20th century, given its vast shifts of population, cultures and peoples.
13 May 1999
Featuring: Stuart Hall, Avtar Brah
Progress
Melvyn Bragg examines whether while mankind has grown in years and knowledge, it has also progressed in terms of happiness and a truer understanding of the human condition.
18 November 1999
Featuring: Anthony O'Hear, Adam Phillips
Social Darwinism
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Social Darwinism, a school of thought which attempted to apply Darwin's ideas about evolution to human society.
20 February 2014
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Gregory Radick, Charlotte Sleigh
The Social Contract
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Social Contract. A key idea in political philosophy, it states that political authority is held through a contract with those to be ruled.
7 February 2008
Featuring: Melissa Lane, Susan James, Karen O'Brien
Literacy and society theorists (7)
Dickens
Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?
12 July 2001
Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
Jorge Luis Borges
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges.
4 January 2007
Featuring: Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
23 May 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene
Milton
Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.
7 March 2002
Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden
Montaigne
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Michel de Montaigne. Best known for his influential Essays, Montaigne is regarded as the father of modern sceptical thought.
25 April 2013
Featuring: David Wootton, Terence Cave, Felicity Green
Aristotelian philosophers (7)
Al-Kindi
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Al-Kindi, often described as the first philosopher in the Arabic tradition.
28 June 2012
Featuring: Hugh Kennedy, James Montgomery, Amira Bennison
Averroes
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Averroes who worked to reconcile the theology of Islam with the rationality of Aristotle, achieving both fame and infamy.
5 October 2006
Featuring: Amira Bennison, Peter Adamson, Anthony Kenny
Avicenna
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Avicenna, among the most important philosophers in the history of Islam.
8 November 2007
Featuring: Peter Adamson, Amira Bennison, Nader El-Bizri
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Maimonides
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work and influence of Maimonides. Widely regarded as the greatest Jewish philosopher of the medieval period.
17 February 2011
Featuring: John Joseph Haldane, Sarah Stroumsa, Peter Adamson
Popper
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.
8 February 2007
Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright
St Thomas Aquinas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss St Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic Church's foremost western philosopher and theologian.
17 September 2009
Featuring: Martin Palmer, John Haldane, Annabel Brett
Formal sciences (7)
Artificial Intelligence
Melvyn Bragg discusses artificial intelligence and whether a computer could imitate the operations of the human mind.
8 December 2005
Featuring: Jon Agar, Alison Adam, Igor Aleksander
Artificial Intelligence
Melvyn Bragg discusses artificial intelligence and whether a computer could imitate the operations of the human mind.
8 December 2005
Featuring: Jon Agar, Alison Adam, Igor Aleksander
Cryptography
Melvyn Bragg discusses the history of codes including the Caesar cipher, the ‘uncrackable’ Vigenere code, the Enigma machine and the cryptography that underwrites the information age.
29 January 2004
Featuring: Simon Singh, Fred Piper, Lisa Jardine
Game Theory
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss game theory, the mathematical study of decision-making.
10 May 2012
Featuring: Ian Stewart, Andrew Colman, Richard Bradley
Mathematics
Melvyn Bragg examines the way perceptions of the importance of mathematics have fluctuated in the 20th century and what mathematics can reveal about how life began, and how it might continue.
6 May 1999
Featuring: Ian Stewart, Brian Butterworth
Mathematics and Platonism
Melvyn Bragg discusses whether mathematics is a process of invention or of discovery. And if it is a discovery, how can we be sure that the mathematic we think we have discovered is the right one?
11 January 2001
Featuring: Ian Stewart, Margaret Wertheim, John D. Barrow
Maths and Storytelling
Melvyn Bragg discusses the similar origins of mathematics and storytelling which both require a shape and structure to make any sense. But is it possible to apply mathematical logic to literature?
30 September 1999
Featuring: John Allen Paulos, Marina Warner
Last stands (7)
Battle of Stamford Bridge
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Battle of Stamford Bridge, a decisive English victory over Viking forces which took place in September 1066.
2 June 2011
Featuring: John Hines, Elizabeth Ashman Rowe, Stephen Baxter
Carthage's Destruction
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the complete destruction of Carthage by Rome, a pivotal moment in world history.
12 February 2009
Featuring: Mary Beard, Jo Quinn, Ellen O'Gorman
Constantinople Siege and Fall
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 1453 siege of Constantinople. A bitter and bloody 53 days that ended a thousand years of the Byzantine Empire.
28 December 2006
Featuring: Roger Crowley, Judith Herrin, Colin Imber
Custer's Last Stand
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Battle of the Little Bighorn, also known as Custer's Last Stand, the bloody 1876 battle between Native Americans and the US Cavalry.
19 May 2011
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Adam Smith, Saul David
The Battle of Bannockburn
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Battle of Bannockburn of 1314, an important victory for Scotland in its fight to win independence from England.
3 February 2011
Featuring: Matthew Strickland, Fiona Watson, Michael Brown
The Siege of Tenochtitlan
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Siege of Tenochtitlan, the event which precipitated the fall of the Aztec Empire in 1521.
27 October 2011
Featuring: Alan Knight, Elizabeth Graham, Caroline Dodds Pennock
Thermopylae
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Battle of Thermopylae, a defining clash between East and West, when King Leonidas and his defeated Spartans passed into legend.
5 February 2004
Featuring: Tom Holland, Simon Goldhill, Edith Hall
Concepts in the philosophy of science (7)
Cogito Ergo Sum
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss one of the most famous statements in philosophy, 'Cogito ergo sum', Rene Descartes' attempt to establish what we can truly know.
28 April 2011
Featuring: Susan James, John Cottingham, Stephen Mulhall
Consciousness
Melvyn Bragg examines why the elusiveness and impenetrability of consciousness continues to fascinate both philosophers and scientists. Is the human mind just not built to understand its own basis?
25 November 1999
Featuring: Ted Honderich, Roger Penrose
Ockham's Razor
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosophical idea of Ockham’s Razor and the medieval philosopher who gave his name to it, William of Ockham.
31 May 2007
Featuring: Anthony Kenny, Marilyn Adams, Richard Alan Cross
The Brain and Consciousness
Melvyn Bragg discusses how our increased knowledge of the functioning of the brain has changed our feelings about our own natures, and our approach to the behaviour and treatment of others.
19 November 1998
Featuring: Steven Rose, Dan Robinson
The Mind/Body Problem
Melvyn Bragg discusses the history of thought about the mind/body problem in philosophy. Does the mind rule the body or the body rule the mind? And where does the mind reside?
13 January 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Julian Baggini, Sue James
The Music of the Spheres
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the music of the spheres, the idea that the revolution of the planets generates a celestial harmony of profound beauty
19 June 2008
Featuring: Peter Forshaw, Jim Bennett, Angela Voss
Time
Melvyn Bragg examines the history of mankind’s attempt to understand the nature of time. Does it exist independently of our perception of it, or is it merely a figment of our imagination?
30 December 1999
Featuring: Neil Johnson, Lee Smolin
Metaphysical theories (7)
Cogito Ergo Sum
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss one of the most famous statements in philosophy, 'Cogito ergo sum', Rene Descartes' attempt to establish what we can truly know.
28 April 2011
Featuring: Susan James, John Cottingham, Stephen Mulhall
Existentialism
Melvyn Bragg discusses existentialism, a twentieth century philosophy of everyday life concerned with the individual, and his or her place within the world.
28 June 2001
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Christina Howells, Simon Critchley
Nihilism
Melvyn Bragg explores the history of Nihilism, a philosophy associated with Nietzsche that claims truth and morality are illusory. Has anything positive come out of the philosophy of ‘nothing’?
16 November 2000
Featuring: Rob Hopkins, Raymond Tallis, Catherine Belsey
Ockham's Razor
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosophical idea of Ockham’s Razor and the medieval philosopher who gave his name to it, William of Ockham.
31 May 2007
Featuring: Anthony Kenny, Marilyn Adams, Richard Alan Cross
The Mind/Body Problem
Melvyn Bragg discusses the history of thought about the mind/body problem in philosophy. Does the mind rule the body or the body rule the mind? And where does the mind reside?
13 January 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Julian Baggini, Sue James
The Music of the Spheres
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the music of the spheres, the idea that the revolution of the planets generates a celestial harmony of profound beauty
19 June 2008
Featuring: Peter Forshaw, Jim Bennett, Angela Voss
Time
Melvyn Bragg examines the history of mankind’s attempt to understand the nature of time. Does it exist independently of our perception of it, or is it merely a figment of our imagination?
30 December 1999
Featuring: Neil Johnson, Lee Smolin
Literary genres (7)
Epistolary Literature
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 18th Century fashion for epistolary literature including Aphra Benn, Samuel Richardson and Jane Austen.
15 March 2007
Featuring: John Mullan, Karen O'Brien, Brean Hammond
Gothic
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss what inspired the 18th century anti-enlightenment Gothic movement, and examines how it has managed to secure itself a permanent position in popular culture even today.
4 January 2001
Featuring: Chris Baldick, A. N. Wilson, Emma Clery
Pastoral Literature
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss pastoral literature which looks at tensions between nature and art, the real and the ideal, the actual and the mythical.
6 July 2006
Featuring: Helen Cooper, Laurence Lerner, Julie Sanders
Roman Satire
Melvyn Bragg and guests Mary Beard, Denis Feeney and Duncan Kennedy discuss Roman satire.
22 April 2010
Featuring: Mary Beard, Denis Feeney, Duncan Kennedy
Sensation
Melvyn Bragg discusses the novels of sensation, a literary phenomenon which swept through the Victorian era.
6 November 2003
Featuring: John Mullan, Lyn Pykett, Dinah Birch
The Romantics
Melvyn Bragg discusses the ideals and legacy of Romanticism, a literary and artistic movement at the turn of the 19th century which gave rise to the great poetry of Wordsworth, Shelley and Keats.
12 October 2000
Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Rosemary Ashton, Nicholas Roe
Tragedy
Melvyn Bragg discusses the history of the ancient genre of tragedy and examines whether we have a psychological need for it, either as catharsis or Schadenfreude.
2 December 1999
Featuring: George Steiner, Catherine Belsey
Concepts in aesthetics (7)
Beauty
Melvyn Bragg discusses the qualities of beauty and the history of aesthetics. Is beauty inherent in things, or in the mind of the observer?
19 May 2005
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Susan James, Julian Baggini
Progress
Melvyn Bragg examines whether while mankind has grown in years and knowledge, it has also progressed in terms of happiness and a truer understanding of the human condition.
18 November 1999
Featuring: Anthony O'Hear, Adam Phillips
Taste
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 18th century obsession with good and bad taste
25 October 2007
Featuring: Amanda Vickery, John Mullan, Jeremy Black
The Avant Garde's Decline and Fall in the 20th Century
Melvyn Bragg examines the social and aesthetic impact of the Avant Garde and discusses whether it has failed in making painting relevant in the 20th century.
25 February 1999
Featuring: Eric Hobsbawm, Frances Morris
The Music of the Spheres
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the music of the spheres, the idea that the revolution of the planets generates a celestial harmony of profound beauty
19 June 2008
Featuring: Peter Forshaw, Jim Bennett, Angela Voss
The Sublime
Melvyn Bragg discusses a transcendental idea that 18th century British artists, poets, philosophers and scientists seized upon and adapted to the intellectual and physical landscape.
12 February 2004
Featuring: Janet Todd, Annie Janowitz, Peter de Bolla
Time
Melvyn Bragg examines the history of mankind’s attempt to understand the nature of time. Does it exist independently of our perception of it, or is it merely a figment of our imagination?
30 December 1999
Featuring: Neil Johnson, Lee Smolin
Modernist writers (6)
Camus
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Nobel Prize winning Algerian-French writer and existentialist philosopher Albert Camus.
3 January 2008
Featuring: Peter Dunwoodie, David Walker, Christina Howells
Dylan Thomas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the works and ideas of this celebrated Welsh poet, from his teenage success to his tours of America via Under Milk Wood.
16 June 2022
Featuring: Nerys Williams, John Goodby, Leo Mellor
Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce's groundbreaking 1916 novel about growing up in Catholic Ireland.
26 November 2009
Featuring: Roy Foster, Katherine Mullin, Jeri Johnson
Kafka's The Trial
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Franz Kafka's novel The Trial.
27 November 2014
Featuring: Elizabeth Boa, Steve Connor, Ritchie Robertson
Proust
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.
17 April 2003
Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser
Samuel Beckett
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the author of Waiting for Godot, who lived in Paris and wrote in French as he found that more difficult than writing in English
17 January 2019
Featuring: Steven Connor, Laura Salisbury, Mark Nixon
German ethicists (6)
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
Hannah Arendt
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Hannah Arendt who examined totalitarianism and politics and, when covering the Eichmann trial, explored 'the banality of evil'.
2 February 2017
Featuring: Lyndsey Stonebridge, Frisbee Sheffield, Robert Eaglestone
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
German political philosophers (6)
Hannah Arendt
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Hannah Arendt who examined totalitarianism and politics and, when covering the Eichmann trial, explored 'the banality of evil'.
2 February 2017
Featuring: Lyndsey Stonebridge, Frisbee Sheffield, Robert Eaglestone
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Marx
Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.
14 July 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones
Walter Benjamin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable philosopher and critic whose ideas, developed in the 1930s, became highly influential after his death while escaping the Holocaust.
10 February 2022
Featuring: Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger
Weber's The Protestant Ethic
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Max Weber's book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
27 March 2014
Featuring: Peter Ghosh, Sam Whimster, Linda Woodhead
Mystics (6)
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aldous Huxley's dystopian 1932 novel Brave New World and its vision of a future of test tube babies, free love and round-the-clock surveillance.
9 April 2009
Featuring: David Bradshaw, Daniel Pick, Michèle Barrett
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Jorge Luis Borges
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges.
4 January 2007
Featuring: Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn
Proust
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.
17 April 2003
Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser
Pythagoras
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and influence of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans.
10 December 2009
Featuring: Ian Stewart, Serafina Cuomo, John O'Connor
Walter Benjamin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable philosopher and critic whose ideas, developed in the 1930s, became highly influential after his death while escaping the Holocaust.
10 February 2022
Featuring: Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger
Philosophy academics (6)
Bergson and Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.
9 May 2019
Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
23 May 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene
Peter Kropotkin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the Russian prince who became an anarchist and who argued that mutual aid was the key to evolution not survival of the fittest
24 February 2022
Featuring: Ruth Kinna, Lee Dugatkin, Simon Dixon
Plato's Gorgias
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock
25 November 2021
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh
Western philosophy (6)
Cogito Ergo Sum
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss one of the most famous statements in philosophy, 'Cogito ergo sum', Rene Descartes' attempt to establish what we can truly know.
28 April 2011
Featuring: Susan James, John Cottingham, Stephen Mulhall
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Logical Positivism
Melvyn Bragg and guests including Barry Smith discuss Logical Positivism, the radical philosophy of the Vienna Circle.
2 July 2009
Featuring: Barry Smith, Nancy Cartwright, Thomas Uebel
Plato's Gorgias
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock
25 November 2021
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh
Socrates
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.
27 September 2007
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett
The Continental-Analytic Split
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the two main traditions of modern Western philosophy: the Continental and Analytic schools.
10 November 2011
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Beatrice Han-Pile, Hans Johann-Glock
French philosophers (6)
Bergson and Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.
9 May 2019
Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair
Blaise Pascal
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the French polymath Blaise Pascal.
19 September 2013
Featuring: David Wootton, Michael Moriarty, Michela Massimi
Germaine de Staël
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas, works and life of Germaine de Stael (1766-1817), a literary critic, author, opponent of Napoleon and developer of Romanticism.
16 November 2017
Featuring: Catriona Seth, Alison Finch, Katherine Astbury
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
23 May 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene
Olympe de Gouges
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, ideas and works of the Frenchwoman who wrote The Declaration of the Rights of Woman in 1791 during the French Revolution
21 April 2022
Featuring: Catriona Seth, Katherine Astbury, Sanja Perovic
Tocqueville: Democracy in America
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alexis de Tocqueville and his study of the American democratic system, written as an example to France of how democracy might develop there.
22 March 2018
Featuring: Robert Gildea, Susan-Mary Grant, Jeremy Jennings
French women philosophers (6)
Christine de Pizan
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Christine de Pizan (c1364-1430) who, according to Simone de Beauvoir, was the first woman to 'take up her pen in defence of her sex'.
8 June 2017
Featuring: Helen Swift, Miranda Griffin, Marilynn Desmond
Emilie du Châtelet
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 18th-century mathematical genius whose insights into Newton and Leibniz were part of the great advance in science in the Enlightenment.
4 February 2021
Featuring: Patricia Fara, David Wootton, Judith Zinsser
Germaine de Staël
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas, works and life of Germaine de Stael (1766-1817), a literary critic, author, opponent of Napoleon and developer of Romanticism.
16 November 2017
Featuring: Catriona Seth, Alison Finch, Katherine Astbury
Olympe de Gouges
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, ideas and works of the Frenchwoman who wrote The Declaration of the Rights of Woman in 1791 during the French Revolution
21 April 2022
Featuring: Catriona Seth, Katherine Astbury, Sanja Perovic
Simone Weil
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil. Admired by Albert Camus and Iris Murdoch, she achieved a great deal in her short life.
15 November 2012
Featuring: Beatrice Han-Pile, Stephen Plant, David Levy
Simone de Beauvoir
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.
22 October 2015
Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd
19th-century male writers (6)
Bergson and Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.
9 May 2019
Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair
Bolivar
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and times of Simon Bolivar, hero of the revolutionary wars that liberated Spanish America from Spain.
30 October 2008
Featuring: Anthony McFarlane, John Fisher, Catherine Davies
Frederick Douglass
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the prominent abolitionist, who in 1845 told his story in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.
9 February 2018
Featuring: Celeste-Marie Bernier, Karen Salt, Nicholas Guyatt
Kierkegaard
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.
20 March 2008
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt
Polidori's The Vampyre
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the myths that gave rise to this novella from 1819 by Byron's physician, John Polidori, and the works such as Bram Stoker's Dracula it inspired.
07 April 2022
Featuring: Nick Groom, Samantha George, Martyn Rady
Thomas Paine's Common Sense
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.
21 January 2016
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson
Anti-consumerists (6)
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aldous Huxley's dystopian 1932 novel Brave New World and its vision of a future of test tube babies, free love and round-the-clock surveillance.
9 April 2009
Featuring: David Bradshaw, Daniel Pick, Michèle Barrett
John Ruskin
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and work of John Ruskin, art and social critic, and one of the most influential figures of the Victorian era.
31 March 2005
Featuring: Dinah Birch, Keith Hanley, Stefan Collini
Marx
Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.
14 July 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.
12 January 2017
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson
Peter Kropotkin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the Russian prince who became an anarchist and who argued that mutual aid was the key to evolution not survival of the fittest
24 February 2022
Featuring: Ruth Kinna, Lee Dugatkin, Simon Dixon
Thoreau and the American Idyll
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the American 19th century writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau
15 January 2009
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Tim Morris, Stephen Fender
British plays adapted into films (6)
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas behind Shakespeare's comedy with its intertwining plots of royal marriage, crossed lovers, quarreling fairies and rude mechanicals
18 April 2019
Featuring: Helen Hackett, Tom Healy, Alison Findlay
Hamlet
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the inspiration for Shakespeare's Hamlet, the play's context and meaning, and why it has fascinated audiences from its first performance.
28 December 2017
Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Carol Rutter, Sonia Massai
Lear
Melvyn Bragg discusses Shakespeare’s King Lear, a shocking and violent vision of a broken family in a godless world.
28 February 2008
Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Katherine Duncan-Jones, Catherine Belsey
Macbeth
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Shakespeare's tragedy of ambition where Macbeth saves his King from one revolt only to murder and replace him, to fulfil a witches' prophecy.
1 October 2020
Featuring: Emma Smith, Kiernan Ryan, David Schalkwyk
Romeo and Juliet
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poetry and power of Shakespeare's tragedy of two young lovers in Verona, their families divided by a bitter feud
17 February 2022
Featuring: Helen Hackett, Paul Prescott, Emma Smith
The Tempest
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss The Tempest, one of Shakespeare's last and richest plays.
14 November 2013
Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Erin Sullivan, Katherine Duncan-Jones
Fiction about suicide (6)
Hamlet
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the inspiration for Shakespeare's Hamlet, the play's context and meaning, and why it has fascinated audiences from its first performance.
28 December 2017
Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Carol Rutter, Sonia Massai
Jane Eyre
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, first published in 1847 under the pseudonym Currer Bell.
18 June 2015
Featuring: Dinah Birch, Karen O'Brien, Sara Lyons
Lear
Melvyn Bragg discusses Shakespeare’s King Lear, a shocking and violent vision of a broken family in a godless world.
28 February 2008
Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Katherine Duncan-Jones, Catherine Belsey
Macbeth
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Shakespeare's tragedy of ambition where Macbeth saves his King from one revolt only to murder and replace him, to fulfil a witches' prophecy.
1 October 2020
Featuring: Emma Smith, Kiernan Ryan, David Schalkwyk
Romeo and Juliet
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poetry and power of Shakespeare's tragedy of two young lovers in Verona, their families divided by a bitter feud
17 February 2022
Featuring: Helen Hackett, Paul Prescott, Emma Smith
Wuthering Heights
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Emily Bronte's story of Heathcliff and Cathy, of love, hatred, revenge and self-destruction across two generations in a remote moorland home.
28 September 2017
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Bowen, Alexandra Lewis
Critical theorists (6)
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
23 May 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.
12 January 2017
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson
Sartre
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
7 October 2004
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
Simone de Beauvoir
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.
22 October 2015
Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd
Walter Benjamin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable philosopher and critic whose ideas, developed in the 1930s, became highly influential after his death while escaping the Holocaust.
10 February 2022
Featuring: Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger
19th-century English poets (6)
Dickens
Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?
12 July 2001
Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the works of Hopkins, unpublished in his lifetime, who FR Leavis called 'the only influential poet of the Victorian age and the greatest'.
21 March 2019
Featuring: Catherine Phillips, Jane Wright, Martin Dubois
John Clare
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss John Clare, the 'Northamptonshire peasant poet', whose writing was as celebrated as his life was humble.
9 February 2017
Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Mina Gorji, Simon Kövesi
Rudyard Kipling
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Rudyard Kipling, a writer sometimes described as the poet of empire.
16 October 2014
Featuring: Howard Booth, Daniel Karlin, Jan Montefiore
Thomas Hardy's Poetry
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hardy's poems, which he prized far above the novels which made him famous and rich, and his ambition to be ranked alongside Shelley and Byron.
13 January 2022
Featuring: Mark Ford, Jane Thomas, Tim Armstrong
William Morris
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss some of the many aspects of William Morris: his activism, poetry and prose and his ideas on arts, crafts and work in an industrial world.
5 July 2018
Featuring: Ingrid Hanson, Marcus Waithe, Jane Thomas
English short story writers (6)
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aldous Huxley's dystopian 1932 novel Brave New World and its vision of a future of test tube babies, free love and round-the-clock surveillance.
9 April 2009
Featuring: David Bradshaw, Daniel Pick, Michèle Barrett
Elizabeth Gaskell's novel North and South
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, who set her 1855 novel in a version of Manchester she called Milton in the county of Darkshire.
9 March 2017
Featuring: Sally Shuttleworth, Dinah Birch, Jenny Uglow
Rudyard Kipling
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Rudyard Kipling, a writer sometimes described as the poet of empire.
16 October 2014
Featuring: Howard Booth, Daniel Karlin, Jan Montefiore
Swift's A Modest Proposal
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jonathan Swift's satirical 1729 pamphlet A Modest Proposal, which reveals much about attitudes to the Irish and the poor in 18th-Century Britain.
29 January 2009
Featuring: John Mullan, Judith Hawley, Ian McBride
Thomas Hardy's Poetry
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hardy's poems, which he prized far above the novels which made him famous and rich, and his ambition to be ranked alongside Shelley and Byron.
13 January 2022
Featuring: Mark Ford, Jane Thomas, Tim Armstrong
William Morris
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss some of the many aspects of William Morris: his activism, poetry and prose and his ideas on arts, crafts and work in an industrial world.
5 July 2018
Featuring: Ingrid Hanson, Marcus Waithe, Jane Thomas
Victorian poets (6)
Christina Rossetti
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Victorian poet Christina Rossetti.
1 December 2011
Featuring: Dinah Birch, Rhian Williams, Nicholas Shrimpton
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the works of Hopkins, unpublished in his lifetime, who FR Leavis called 'the only influential poet of the Victorian age and the greatest'.
21 March 2019
Featuring: Catherine Phillips, Jane Wright, Martin Dubois
John Clare
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss John Clare, the 'Northamptonshire peasant poet', whose writing was as celebrated as his life was humble.
9 February 2017
Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Mina Gorji, Simon Kövesi
Oscar Wilde
Melvyn Bragg discusses Oscar Wilde, the Aesthetes and his literary legacy. Was Wilde a reactionary - the last of the romantics - or was he the midwife to modernism?
6 December 2001
Featuring: Valentine Cunningham, Regenia Gagnier, Neil Sammells
Thomas Hardy's Poetry
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hardy's poems, which he prized far above the novels which made him famous and rich, and his ambition to be ranked alongside Shelley and Byron.
13 January 2022
Featuring: Mark Ford, Jane Thomas, Tim Armstrong
William Morris
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss some of the many aspects of William Morris: his activism, poetry and prose and his ideas on arts, crafts and work in an industrial world.
5 July 2018
Featuring: Ingrid Hanson, Marcus Waithe, Jane Thomas
Western culture (6)
Capitalism
Melvyn Bragg discusses the history of capitalism and examines whether we have witnessed its triumph or if we are only now learning the full costs and the social impact of its unfettered advance.
24 June 1999
Featuring: Anatole Kaletsky, Edward Luttwak
Democracy
Melvyn Bragg discusses the origins of democracy, across cultures and centuries of Europe and the Middle East.
18 October 2001
Featuring: Melissa Lane, David Wootton, Tim Winter
Plato's Gorgias
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock
25 November 2021
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh
Socrates
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.
27 September 2007
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett
The Enlightenment in Britain
Melvyn Bragg examines the part British thinkers played in the Enlightenment in the 18th century, and examines whether the shifts of thought in those years provided the platform for the modern world.
18 January 2001
Featuring: Roy Porter, Linda Colley, Jeremy Black
The Renaissance
Melvyn Bragg explores the veracity of modern claims about the Renaissance and whether our current perceptions about its role in cultural history stem from a 19th century historian.
8 June 2000
Featuring: Francis Ames-Lewis, Peter Burke, Evelyn Welch
Philosophers of death (6)
Camus
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Nobel Prize winning Algerian-French writer and existentialist philosopher Albert Camus.
3 January 2008
Featuring: Peter Dunwoodie, David Walker, Christina Howells
Kierkegaard
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.
20 March 2008
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt
Plato's Gorgias
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock
25 November 2021
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh
Sartre
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
7 October 2004
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells
Socrates
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.
27 September 2007
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett
William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience
Melvyn Bragg and guests Jonathan Ree, John Haldane and Gwen Griffith-Dickson discuss The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James.
13 May 2010
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, John Haldane, Gwen Griffith-Dickson
Works of unknown authorship (6)
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poem of the knight who interrupts King Arthur's Christmas celebrations, challenging someone to chop off his head if he can do the same in return
13 December 2018
Featuring: Laura Ashe, Ad Putter, Simon Armitage
The Bhagavad Gita
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the contents and influence of the Bhagavad Gita, one of the most revered texts of Hinduism.
31 March 2011
Featuring: Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, Julius J. Lipner, Jessica Frazier
The Egyptian Book of the Dead
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss The Book of the Dead, an ancient Egyptian collection of spells intended to assist the journey of the deceased through the underworld.
27 April 2017
Featuring: John Taylor, Kate Spence, Richard Parkinson
The Mabinogion
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Welsh stories of Arthurian romance and Celtic mythology created in the oral tradition for centuries before being written down in the Middle Ages.
10 May 2018
Featuring: Sioned Davies, Helen Fulton, Juliette Wood
The Song of Roland
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the epic reimagining of the Battle of Roncevaux Pass in 778AD when Charlemagne's rearguard was ambushed and his knight Roland fought and died.
4 November 2021
Featuring: Laura Ashe, Miranda Griffin, Luke Sunderland
The Upanishads
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Upanishads, the sacred texts of Hinduism. Dating from about 700 BC, their mystical and philosophical nature still resonates today.
8 November 2012
Featuring: Jessica Frazier, Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, Simon Brodbeck
English women poets (6)
Ada Lovelace
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 19th century mathematician and hard living daughter of Lord Byron, Ada Lovelace.
6 March 2008
Featuring: Patricia Fara, Doron Swade, John Fuegi
Aphra Behn
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Aphra Behn, known for her plays for the Restoration stage such as The Rover and for her novel Oroonoko.
12 October 2017
Featuring: Janet Todd, Ros Ballaster, Claire Bowditch
Christina Rossetti
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Victorian poet Christina Rossetti.
1 December 2011
Featuring: Dinah Birch, Rhian Williams, Nicholas Shrimpton
Fanny Burney
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the 18th-century writer Fanny Burney, also known as Frances D'Arblay and Frances Burney, best known for her novel Evelina.
23 April 2015
Featuring: Nicole Pohl, Judith Hawley, John Mullan
Iris Murdoch
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the growing prominence of the philosophy of one of the most celebrated novelists of the 20th century, who developed her ideas in response to WWII.
21 October 2021
Featuring: Anil Gomes, Anne Rowe, Miles Leeson
The Death of Elizabeth I
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the death of Queen Elizabeth I and its immediate impact, as a foreign monarch became King in the face of plots and plague.
15 October 2009
Featuring: John Guy, Clare Jackson, Helen Hackett
Irony theorists (6)
Edward Gibbon
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the writer of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, one of the most celebrated works of its kind.
17 June 2021
Featuring: David Womersley, Charlotte Roberts, Karen O’Brien
Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce's groundbreaking 1916 novel about growing up in Catholic Ireland.
26 November 2009
Featuring: Roy Foster, Katherine Mullin, Jeri Johnson
Kierkegaard
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.
20 March 2008
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt
Montaigne
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Michel de Montaigne. Best known for his influential Essays, Montaigne is regarded as the father of modern sceptical thought.
25 April 2013
Featuring: David Wootton, Terence Cave, Felicity Green
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.
12 January 2017
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson
Socrates
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.
27 September 2007
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett
English non-fiction writers (6)
Annie Besant
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life of 19th-century writer and campaigner Annie Besant.
21 June 2012
Featuring: Lawrence Goldman, David Stack, Yasmin Khan
Booth's Life and Labour Survey
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Charles Booth's ambitious project to discover how many people in late Victorian London were living in poverty, and understand why
10 June 2021
Featuring: Emma Griffin, Sarah Wise, Lawrence Goldman
Mill
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.
18 May 2006
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan
Milton
Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.
7 March 2002
Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden
Octavia Hill
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Victorian reformer Octavia Hill, pioneer of social housing and campaigner for public open spaces.
7 April 2011
Featuring: Dinah Birch, Lawrence Goldman, Gillian Darley
Sir Thomas Browne
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, ideas and language of Browne (1605-82), a doctor sharing his personal views on science, history and religion at a time of great change
6 June 2019
Featuring: Claire Preston, Jessica Wolfe, Kevin Killeen
19th-century German non-fiction writers (6)
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Marx
Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.
14 July 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.
12 January 2017
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
1st-century Romans (6)
Josephus
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Flavius Josephus, author of The Jewish War.
21 May 2015
Featuring: Tessa Rajak, Philip Alexander, Martin Goodman
Ovid
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Roman poet whose influence is arguably greater than any poet of the classical age, besides Homer, even though his writing led to his exile.
29 April 2021
Featuring: Maria Wyke, Gail Trimble, Dunstan Lowe
Pliny the Younger
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Roman lawyer and statesman Pliny the Younger, whose letters offer a fascinating insight into his life and the ancient world.
12 December 2013
Featuring: Catharine Edwards, Roy Gibson, Alice König
Pliny's Natural History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Pliny the Elder's Natural History, a comprehensive and influential encyclopedia of the natural sciences written in the first century AD.
8 July 2010
Featuring: Serafina Cuomo, Aude Doody, Liba Taub
Ptolemy and Ancient Astronomy
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the last of the great Greek astronomers of antiquity, Ptolemy, and his influence on ancient and medieval astronomy.
17 November 2011
Featuring: Liba Taub, Jim Bennett, Charles Burnett
Seneca the Younger
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Seneca: philosopher, playwright, tutor to Nero, one of the first great writers born in the new Roman empire after the fall of the Republic.
23 February 2017
Featuring: Mary Beard, Catharine Edwards, Alessandro Schiesaro
Members of the Académie Française (6)
Bergson and Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.
9 May 2019
Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair
Louis Pasteur
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Louis Pasteur, microbiologist, developer of vaccines, saviour of the French beer and wine industries and preserver of milk.
18 May 2017
Featuring: Andrew Mendelsohn, Anne Hardy, Michael Worboys
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
23 May 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene
Montesquieu
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of the French political philosopher (1689-1755) whose work on liberty and republicanism, banned at home, influenced the US constitution.
14 June 2018
Featuring: Richard Bourke, Rachel Hammersley, Richard Whatmore
Pierre-Simon Laplace
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great French mathematician who tackled questions on the stability of the Solar System and planet rotation and devised the basis for metrication
8 April 2021
Featuring: Marcus du Sautoy, Timothy Gowers, Colva Roney-Dougal
Tocqueville: Democracy in America
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alexis de Tocqueville and his study of the American democratic system, written as an example to France of how democracy might develop there.
22 March 2018
Featuring: Robert Gildea, Susan-Mary Grant, Jeremy Jennings
Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (6)
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Gauss, 'prince of mathematicians', including those on number theory, geometry, probability theory, astronomy and electromagnetism.
30 November 2017
Featuring: Marcus du Sautoy, Colva Roney-Dougal, Nick Evans
Darwin: On the Origins of Charles Darwin
Melvyn Bragg presents a series about the life and work of Charles Darwin. Darwin's early life and time at Cambridge, where his interests shifted from religion to natural science.
5 January 2009
Featuring: Jim Moore, Steve Jones, David Norman, Colin Higgins
Louis Pasteur
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Louis Pasteur, microbiologist, developer of vaccines, saviour of the French beer and wine industries and preserver of milk.
18 May 2017
Featuring: Andrew Mendelsohn, Anne Hardy, Michael Worboys
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
23 May 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene
Michael Faraday
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Michael Faraday, the most famous British scientist of the 19th century.
25 December 2015
Featuring: Geoffrey Cantor, Laura Herz, Frank James
Pierre-Simon Laplace
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great French mathematician who tackled questions on the stability of the Solar System and planet rotation and devised the basis for metrication
8 April 2021
Featuring: Marcus du Sautoy, Timothy Gowers, Colva Roney-Dougal
Poems adapted into films (6)
Beowulf
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the epic poem Beowulf, one of the masterpieces of Anglo-Saxon literature.
5 March 2015
Featuring: Laura Ashe, Clare Lees, Andy Orchard
Epic of Gilgamesh
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Gilgamesh Epic, often described as the earliest surviving great work of literature, with origins in Mesopotamia in the 3rd millennium BC.
3 November 2016
Featuring: Andrew George, Frances Reynolds, Martin Worthington
Shahnameh of Ferdowsi
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the epic poem the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi, the 'Book of Kings', which has been at the heart of Persian culture for the past thousand years.
13 December 2012
Featuring: Narguess Farzad, Charles Melville, Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis
The Iliad
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the story of a crucial 40 days in the 10-year battle for Troy, framed by Achilles' anger first at his leader Agamenmon and then at his enemy Hector.
13 September 2018
Featuring: Edith Hall, Barbara Graziosi, Paul Cartledge
The Odyssey
Melvyn Bragg discusses Homer’s Odyssey, the epic story of the Greek hero Odysseus’ journey back from Troy, and its foundational position in the history of western literature and ideas.
9 September 2004
Featuring: Simon Goldhill, Edith Hall, Oliver Taplin
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Coleridge's poem of a grim voyage in which a sailor shoots an albatross and is forced to tell the story of his crime forever.
4 March 2021
Featuring: Sir Jonathan Bate, Tom Mole, Rosemary Ashton
Founders of religions (6)
Akhenaten
Melvyn Bragg and guests Elizabeth Frood, Richard Parkinson and Kate Spence discuss Akhenaten, the ruler who brought revolutionary change to ancient Egypt.
1 October 2009
Featuring: Richard Parkinson, Elizabeth Frood, Kate Spence
Confucius
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosophy of Confucius, a body of ideas which, more than any other philosophy, has defined what it is to be Chinese.
1 November 2001
Featuring: Frances Wood, Tim Barrett, Tao Tao Liu
George Fox and the Quakers
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the foundation of the Religious Society of Friends, otherwise known as the Quakers, in the 17th century.
5 April 2012
Featuring: Justin Champion, John Coffey, Kate Peters
John Wesley and Methodism
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the difference John Wesley made during the Christian Revival of the 18th Century, developing Methodism into a major movement around the world
10 December 2020
Featuring: Stephen Plant, Eryn White, William Gibson
Pythagoras
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and influence of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans.
10 December 2009
Featuring: Ian Stewart, Serafina Cuomo, John O'Connor
The Buddha
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life of Siddhartha Gautama, the originator of Buddhism, and examines why his teachings have now become one of the fastest growing religions of the Western world.
14 March 2002
Featuring: Peter Harvey, Kate Crosby, Mahinda Deegalle
17th-century English writers (6)
Aphra Behn
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Aphra Behn, known for her plays for the Restoration stage such as The Rover and for her novel Oroonoko.
12 October 2017
Featuring: Janet Todd, Ros Ballaster, Claire Bowditch
George Fox and the Quakers
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the foundation of the Religious Society of Friends, otherwise known as the Quakers, in the 17th century.
5 April 2012
Featuring: Justin Champion, John Coffey, Kate Peters
Hobbes
Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.
1 December 2005
Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett
Mary Astell
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosopher Mary Astell (1666 – 1731) who has been described as "the first English feminist".
5 November 2020
Featuring: Hannah Dawson, Mark Goldie, Teresa Bejan
Milton
Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.
7 March 2002
Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden
Robert Boyle
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Robert Boyle, a pioneering scientist and one of the first Fellows of the Royal Society.
12 June 2014
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Michael Hunter, Anna Marie Roos
English agnostics (6)
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aldous Huxley's dystopian 1932 novel Brave New World and its vision of a future of test tube babies, free love and round-the-clock surveillance.
9 April 2009
Featuring: David Bradshaw, Daniel Pick, Michèle Barrett
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Darwin: On the Origins of Charles Darwin
Melvyn Bragg presents a series about the life and work of Charles Darwin. Darwin's early life and time at Cambridge, where his interests shifted from religion to natural science.
5 January 2009
Featuring: Jim Moore, Steve Jones, David Norman, Colin Higgins
Mill
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.
18 May 2006
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan
Paul Dirac
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Bristolian theoretical physicist, ranked alongside Einstein by his peers, who won a Nobel for his work on quantum mechanics.
5 March 2020
Featuring: Graham Farmelo, Valerie Gibson, David Berman
Rosalind Franklin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the achievements of the pioneering scientist Rosalind Franklin.
22 February 2018
Featuring: Patricia Fara, Jim Naismith, Judith Howard
Royal Medal winners (6)
Alfred Russel Wallace
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Victorian pioneer of evolutionary theory Alfred Russel Wallace.
21 March 2013
Featuring: Steve Jones, George Beccaloni, Ted Benton
Darwin: On the Origins of Charles Darwin
Melvyn Bragg presents a series about the life and work of Charles Darwin. Darwin's early life and time at Cambridge, where his interests shifted from religion to natural science.
5 January 2009
Featuring: Jim Moore, Steve Jones, David Norman, Colin Higgins
Dorothy Hodgkin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work, ideas and life of the woman who won the 1964 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her work on the structures of vitamin B12 and penicillin.
3 October 2019
Featuring: Georgina Ferry, Judith Howard, Patricia Fara
John Dalton
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss scientist John Dalton, who pioneered the development of atomic theory and carried out research into meteorology and colour blindness.
27 October 2016
Featuring: Jim Bennett, Aileen Fyfe, James Sumner
Michael Faraday
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Michael Faraday, the most famous British scientist of the 19th century.
25 December 2015
Featuring: Geoffrey Cantor, Laura Herz, Frank James
Paul Dirac
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Bristolian theoretical physicist, ranked alongside Einstein by his peers, who won a Nobel for his work on quantum mechanics.
5 March 2020
Featuring: Graham Farmelo, Valerie Gibson, David Berman
Modernist theatre (6)
Auden
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss WH Auden's life and poetry from Europe before WWII, reflecting on his travels to Spain, China and Germany and the rise of totalitarianism.
19 December 2019
Featuring: Mark Ford, Janet Montefiore, Jeremy Noel-Tod
Chekhov
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the great Russian writer Anton Chekhov.
14 March 2013
Featuring: Catriona Kelly, Cynthia Marsh, Rosamund Bartlett
Federico Garcia Lorca
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of Federico Garcia Lorca, author of Blood Wedding, Yerma and The House of Bernarda Alba, executed by Franco's forces, his body unrecovered.
4 July 2019
Featuring: Maria Delgado, Federico Bonaddio, Sarah Wright
Henrik Ibsen
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great Norwegian playwright whose middle-class tragedies include A Doll's House, The Wild Duck, Hedda Gabler and An Enemy of the People.
31 May 2018
Featuring: Tore Rem, Kirsten Shepherd-Barr, Dinah Birch
Yeats and Irish Politics
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poet W.B. Yeats and Irish politics from the suspension of home rule to the division of Ireland.
17 April 2008
Featuring: Roy Foster, Fran Brearton, Warwick Gould
Yeats and Mysticism
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and beliefs of the Irish Poet W B Yeats and explores how a passion for magic and mysticism served and stood alongside his poetry.
31 January 2002
Featuring: Roy Foster, Warwick Gould, Brenda Maddox
Hall of Fame for Great Americans inductees (6)
Benjamin Franklin
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.
1 March 2012
Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara
President Ulysses S Grant
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Grant's role in rebuilding America in the decade after the Civil War and his impact on African-Americans and Native Americans.
30 May 2019
Featuring: Erik Mathisen, Susan-Mary Grant, Robert Cook
Thomas Edison
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of Thomas Edison, one of the great inventors and cultural figures of modern America.
9 December 2010
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Kathleen Burk, Iwan Morus
Thomas Paine's Common Sense
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.
21 January 2016
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson
Thoreau and the American Idyll
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the American 19th century writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau
15 January 2009
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Tim Morris, Stephen Fender
Washington and the American Revolution
Melvyn Bragg discusses the first President of the United States, George Washington, and the people and ideas that saw the American Revolution overthrow British rule in 1775.
24 June 2004
Featuring: Carol Berkin, Simon Middleton, Colin Bonwick
French male non-fiction writers (6)
Bergson and Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.
9 May 2019
Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
23 May 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene
Montaigne
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Michel de Montaigne. Best known for his influential Essays, Montaigne is regarded as the father of modern sceptical thought.
25 April 2013
Featuring: David Wootton, Terence Cave, Felicity Green
Proust
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.
17 April 2003
Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser
Sartre
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
7 October 2004
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells
Tocqueville: Democracy in America
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alexis de Tocqueville and his study of the American democratic system, written as an example to France of how democracy might develop there.
22 March 2018
Featuring: Robert Gildea, Susan-Mary Grant, Jeremy Jennings
Emotions (6)
Guilt
Melvyn Bragg discusses the moral conscience and take a long hard look at the idea of guilt.
1 November 2007
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Miranda Fricker, Oliver Davies
Happiness
Melvyn Bragg discusses whether 'happiness' means living a life of pleasure or of virtue. How much does this ancient philosophical debate still define what it means to be happy today?
24 January 2002
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Simon Blackburn, A. C. Grayling
Hope
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the development of ideas about hope, left in Pandora's box either as a consolation or as another evil, later the companion of faith and love
22 November 2018
Featuring: Beatrice Han-Pile, Robert Stern, Judith Wolfe
Hysteria
Melvyn Bragg discusses a problematic notion which can be an emotional condition, a syndrome, an over-reaction, or the physical signs of trauma, which became the bedrock for psychoanalysis.
22 April 2004
Featuring: Juliet Mitchell, Rachel Bowlby, Brett Kahr
The Philosophy of Solitude
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the philosophy of solitude, from religious hermits to those exiled from their homeland.
19 June 2014
Featuring: Melissa Lane, Simon Blackburn, John Haldane
Victorian Pessimism
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Victorian Pessimism, from Matthew Arnold’s poem Dover Beach to the malign universe of Thomas Hardy’s novels.
10 May 2007
Featuring: Dinah Birch, Rosemary Ashton, Peter Mandler
People whose existence is disputed (6)
Aesop
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aesop, legendary author of the famous collection of fables.
20 November 2014
Featuring: Pavlos Avlamis, Lucy Grig, Simon Goldhill
King Solomon
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Solomon, the biblical king celebrated in the Old Testament for his wisdom.
7 June 2012
Featuring: Martin Palmer, Philip Alexander, Katharine Dell
Merlin
Melvyn Bragg discusses Merlin, prophet, magician, king maker and the original mad man of the woods, distraught at the death of his lord in battle.
30 June 2005
Featuring: Juliette Wood, Stephen Knight, Peter Forshaw
Robin Hood
Melvyn Bragg discusses the centuries old myth of the most romantic noble outlaw. Was he a yeoman, an aristocrat, an anarchist or the figment of a collective imagination?
30 October 2003
Featuring: Stephen Knight, Thomas Hahn, Juliette Wood
Romulus and Remus
Melvyn Bragg and guests Mary Beard, Peter Wiseman and Tim Cornell discuss Romulus and Remus, the foundation myth of Rome.
24 January 2013
Featuring: Mary Beard, Peter Wiseman, Tim Cornell
Sun Tzu and The Art of War
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Chinese military adviser Sun Tzu from the 6th century BC and the influential work of military strategy associated with him, The Art of War.
1 March 2018
Featuring: Hilde de Weerdt, Tim Barrett, Imre Galambos
19th-century English women writers (6)
Ada Lovelace
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 19th century mathematician and hard living daughter of Lord Byron, Ada Lovelace.
6 March 2008
Featuring: Patricia Fara, Doron Swade, John Fuegi
Annie Besant
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life of 19th-century writer and campaigner Annie Besant.
21 June 2012
Featuring: Lawrence Goldman, David Stack, Yasmin Khan
Christina Rossetti
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Victorian poet Christina Rossetti.
1 December 2011
Featuring: Dinah Birch, Rhian Williams, Nicholas Shrimpton
Elizabeth Gaskell's novel North and South
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, who set her 1855 novel in a version of Manchester she called Milton in the county of Darkshire.
9 March 2017
Featuring: Sally Shuttleworth, Dinah Birch, Jenny Uglow
Fanny Burney
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the 18th-century writer Fanny Burney, also known as Frances D'Arblay and Frances Burney, best known for her novel Evelina.
23 April 2015
Featuring: Nicole Pohl, Judith Hawley, John Mullan
Harriet Martineau
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Harriet Martineau who wrote extensively in the C19th on a wide range of subjects including abolition, and is called the mother of sociology.
8 December 2016
Featuring: Valerie Sanders, Karen O'Brien, Ella Dzelzainis
Male essayists (6)
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aldous Huxley's dystopian 1932 novel Brave New World and its vision of a future of test tube babies, free love and round-the-clock surveillance.
9 April 2009
Featuring: David Bradshaw, Daniel Pick, Michèle Barrett
John Ruskin
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and work of John Ruskin, art and social critic, and one of the most influential figures of the Victorian era.
31 March 2005
Featuring: Dinah Birch, Keith Hanley, Stefan Collini
Johnson
Melvyn Bragg discusses Samuel Johnson, a giant of 18th century literature, language and letters, and perhaps the most quotable Englishman to have ever lifted a pen.
27 October 2005
Featuring: John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Judith Hawley
Jorge Luis Borges
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges.
4 January 2007
Featuring: Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn
Milton
Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.
7 March 2002
Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden
Seneca the Younger
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Seneca: philosopher, playwright, tutor to Nero, one of the first great writers born in the new Roman empire after the fall of the Republic.
23 February 2017
Featuring: Mary Beard, Catharine Edwards, Alessandro Schiesaro
Metaphysics writers (6)
Al-Kindi
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Al-Kindi, often described as the first philosopher in the Arabic tradition.
28 June 2012
Featuring: Hugh Kennedy, James Montgomery, Amira Bennison
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Jorge Luis Borges
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges.
4 January 2007
Featuring: Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
23 May 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene
Montaigne
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Michel de Montaigne. Best known for his influential Essays, Montaigne is regarded as the father of modern sceptical thought.
25 April 2013
Featuring: David Wootton, Terence Cave, Felicity Green
Popper
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.
8 February 2007
Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright
Epistemological theories (6)
Cogito Ergo Sum
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss one of the most famous statements in philosophy, 'Cogito ergo sum', Rene Descartes' attempt to establish what we can truly know.
28 April 2011
Featuring: Susan James, John Cottingham, Stephen Mulhall
Empiricism
Melvyn Bragg discusses the development of the idea formulated by John Locke that all knowledge arises from experience, and looks at its effect on the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution.
10 June 2004
Featuring: Judith Hawley, Murray Pittock, Jonathan Rée
Logical Positivism
Melvyn Bragg and guests including Barry Smith discuss Logical Positivism, the radical philosophy of the Vienna Circle.
2 July 2009
Featuring: Barry Smith, Nancy Cartwright, Thomas Uebel
Ockham's Razor
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosophical idea of Ockham’s Razor and the medieval philosopher who gave his name to it, William of Ockham.
31 May 2007
Featuring: Anthony Kenny, Marilyn Adams, Richard Alan Cross
Scepticism
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the history of philosophical scepticism.
5 July 2012
Featuring: Peter Millican, Melissa Lane, Jill Kraye
The Mind/Body Problem
Melvyn Bragg discusses the history of thought about the mind/body problem in philosophy. Does the mind rule the body or the body rule the mind? And where does the mind reside?
13 January 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Julian Baggini, Sue James
Mental processes (6)
Consciousness
Melvyn Bragg examines why the elusiveness and impenetrability of consciousness continues to fascinate both philosophers and scientists. Is the human mind just not built to understand its own basis?
25 November 1999
Featuring: Ted Honderich, Roger Penrose
Imagination
Melvyn Bragg discusses the creatives forces of the imagination, that companion of artists, scientists, leaders and visionaries.
28 November 2002
Featuring: Susan Stuart, Steven Mithen, Semir Zeki
Imagination and Consciousness
Melvyn Bragg investigates how neuroscience can help to explain the enigmas of consciousness and how we are able to imagine things when they are not there; ideas that have long troubled philosophers.
29 June 2000
Featuring: Gerald Edelman, Igor Aleksander, Margaret Boden
Memory
Melvyn Bragg discusses the significance of memory. Is it a repository of events waiting to be plucked to consciousness?
29 May 2003
Featuring: Martin Conway, Mike Kopelman, Kim Graham
Memory and Culture
Melvyn Bragg discusses how our ways of remembering have changed and explores whether memory itself can remain forever unchanged in its role within our psychology.
27 May 1999
Featuring: Malcolm Bowie, Nancy Wood
The Brain and Consciousness
Melvyn Bragg discusses how our increased knowledge of the functioning of the brain has changed our feelings about our own natures, and our approach to the behaviour and treatment of others.
19 November 1998
Featuring: Steven Rose, Dan Robinson
English male novelists, English male short story writers (6)
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aldous Huxley's dystopian 1932 novel Brave New World and its vision of a future of test tube babies, free love and round-the-clock surveillance.
9 April 2009
Featuring: David Bradshaw, Daniel Pick, Michèle Barrett
Dickens
Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?
12 July 2001
Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen
Rudyard Kipling
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Rudyard Kipling, a writer sometimes described as the poet of empire.
16 October 2014
Featuring: Howard Booth, Daniel Karlin, Jan Montefiore
Swift's A Modest Proposal
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jonathan Swift's satirical 1729 pamphlet A Modest Proposal, which reveals much about attitudes to the Irish and the poor in 18th-Century Britain.
29 January 2009
Featuring: John Mullan, Judith Hawley, Ian McBride
Thomas Hardy's Poetry
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hardy's poems, which he prized far above the novels which made him famous and rich, and his ambition to be ranked alongside Shelley and Byron.
13 January 2022
Featuring: Mark Ford, Jane Thomas, Tim Armstrong
William Morris
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss some of the many aspects of William Morris: his activism, poetry and prose and his ideas on arts, crafts and work in an industrial world.
5 July 2018
Featuring: Ingrid Hanson, Marcus Waithe, Jane Thomas
18th-century German male writers (5)
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Moses Mendelssohn
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of Moses Mendelssohn, one of the greatest thinkers of the German Enlightenment.
22 March 2012
Featuring: Christopher Clark, Abigail Green, Adam Sutcliffe
19th-century German writers (5)
Clausewitz and On War
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss On War, the 19th-century treatise on the theory of warfare by the Prussian soldier Carl von Clausewitz.
17 May 2012
Featuring: Saul David, Hew Strachan, Beatrice Heuser
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
Weber's The Protestant Ethic
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Max Weber's book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
27 March 2014
Featuring: Peter Ghosh, Sam Whimster, Linda Woodhead
Idealists (5)
Bishop Berkeley
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the philosopher George Berkeley, one of the most significant thinkers of the 18th century.
20 March 2014
Featuring: Peter Millican, Tom Stoneham, Michela Massimi
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Plato's Gorgias
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock
25 November 2021
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
Phenomenologists (5)
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
23 May 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene
Sartre
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
7 October 2004
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
Simone de Beauvoir
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.
22 October 2015
Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd
Philosophy teachers (5)
Bergson and Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.
9 May 2019
Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
23 May 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene
Peter Kropotkin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the Russian prince who became an anarchist and who argued that mutual aid was the key to evolution not survival of the fittest
24 February 2022
Featuring: Ruth Kinna, Lee Dugatkin, Simon Dixon
Wittgenstein
Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.
4 December 2003
Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn
Rationalists (5)
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Plato's Gorgias
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock
25 November 2021
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh
Popper
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.
8 February 2007
Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright
Spinoza
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Spinoza whose profound and complex ideas about God had him celebrated as an atheist in the 18th century.
3 May 2007
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham
German social commentators (5)
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Marx
Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.
14 July 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.
12 January 2017
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
Weber's The Protestant Ethic
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Max Weber's book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
27 March 2014
Featuring: Peter Ghosh, Sam Whimster, Linda Woodhead
17th-century Latin-language writers (5)
Hobbes
Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.
1 December 2005
Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett
Jan Amos Komenský
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Czech man who tried to use education to build a better understanding between the peoples of Europe who were otherwise divided by religious wars.
19 May 2022
Featuring: Vladimir Urbanek, Suzanna Ivanic, Howard Hotson
Johannes Kepler
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the German astronomer Johannes Kepler.
29 December 2016
Featuring: David Wootton, Ulinka Rublack, Adam Mosley
Milton
Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.
7 March 2002
Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden
Spinoza
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Spinoza whose profound and complex ideas about God had him celebrated as an atheist in the 18th century.
3 May 2007
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham
Executed philosophers (5)
Cicero
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Cicero's political ideas on laws, duty, tyrants and the republic, which he developed as the Roman Republic was threatened by Caesar and civil wars.
25 January 2018
Featuring: Melissa Lane, Catherine Steel, Valentina Arena
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Bonhoeffer's ideas about Christian ethics, the role of the Church in a secular world, and his attempts to overthrow Hitler.
27 September 2018
Featuring: Stephen Plant, Eleanor McLaughlin, Tom Greggs
Olympe de Gouges
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, ideas and works of the Frenchwoman who wrote The Declaration of the Rights of Woman in 1791 during the French Revolution
21 April 2022
Featuring: Catriona Seth, Katherine Astbury, Sanja Perovic
Seneca the Younger
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Seneca: philosopher, playwright, tutor to Nero, one of the first great writers born in the new Roman empire after the fall of the Republic.
23 February 2017
Featuring: Mary Beard, Catharine Edwards, Alessandro Schiesaro
Socrates
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.
27 September 2007
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett
18th-century English people (5)
Michael Faraday
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Michael Faraday, the most famous British scientist of the 19th century.
25 December 2015
Featuring: Geoffrey Cantor, Laura Herz, Frank James
Polidori's The Vampyre
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the myths that gave rise to this novella from 1819 by Byron's physician, John Polidori, and the works such as Bram Stoker's Dracula it inspired.
07 April 2022
Featuring: Nick Groom, Samantha George, Martyn Rady
Thomas Paine's Common Sense
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.
21 January 2016
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson
Voyages of James Cook
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the science behind Capt James Cook's three voyages of discovery, from 1768 to 1779, one of over a thousand ideas suggested by listeners.
3 December 2015
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Rebekah Higgitt, Sophie Forgan
Wilberforce
In an unusual edition of In Our Time, marking the 1807 Abolition of the Slave Trade, Melvyn Bragg leaves the studio to examine the life of William Wilberforce.
22 February 2007
Featuring
Love stories (5)
Great Gatsby
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the great American novels of the 20th Century, where inexplicably rich Jay Gatsby aims to win Daisy Buchanan from her millionaire husband.
14 January 2021
Featuring: Sarah Churchwell, Philip McGowan, William Blazek
Jane Eyre
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, first published in 1847 under the pseudonym Currer Bell.
18 June 2015
Featuring: Dinah Birch, Karen O'Brien, Sara Lyons
Romeo and Juliet
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poetry and power of Shakespeare's tragedy of two young lovers in Verona, their families divided by a bitter feud
17 February 2022
Featuring: Helen Hackett, Paul Prescott, Emma Smith
Tristan and Iseult
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Tristan and Iseult, as told by Thomas of Britain and Beroul in the 12th century and reworked by Gottfried of Strasbourg and others, including Wagner.
31 December 2015
Featuring: Laura Ashe, Juliette Wood, Mark Chinca
Wuthering Heights
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Emily Bronte's story of Heathcliff and Cathy, of love, hatred, revenge and self-destruction across two generations in a remote moorland home.
28 September 2017
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Bowen, Alexandra Lewis
Plays adapted into television shows (5)
Hamlet
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the inspiration for Shakespeare's Hamlet, the play's context and meaning, and why it has fascinated audiences from its first performance.
28 December 2017
Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Carol Rutter, Sonia Massai
Lear
Melvyn Bragg discusses Shakespeare’s King Lear, a shocking and violent vision of a broken family in a godless world.
28 February 2008
Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Katherine Duncan-Jones, Catherine Belsey
Macbeth
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Shakespeare's tragedy of ambition where Macbeth saves his King from one revolt only to murder and replace him, to fulfil a witches' prophecy.
1 October 2020
Featuring: Emma Smith, Kiernan Ryan, David Schalkwyk
Romeo and Juliet
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poetry and power of Shakespeare's tragedy of two young lovers in Verona, their families divided by a bitter feud
17 February 2022
Featuring: Helen Hackett, Paul Prescott, Emma Smith
The Tempest
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss The Tempest, one of Shakespeare's last and richest plays.
14 November 2013
Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Erin Sullivan, Katherine Duncan-Jones
20th-century German philosophers (5)
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Bonhoeffer's ideas about Christian ethics, the role of the Church in a secular world, and his attempts to overthrow Hitler.
27 September 2018
Featuring: Stephen Plant, Eleanor McLaughlin, Tom Greggs
Hannah Arendt
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Hannah Arendt who examined totalitarianism and politics and, when covering the Eichmann trial, explored 'the banality of evil'.
2 February 2017
Featuring: Lyndsey Stonebridge, Frisbee Sheffield, Robert Eaglestone
Rosa Luxemburg
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rosa Luxemburg, 'Red Rosa', a leading revolutionary and agitator in Poland and Germany until her arrest and murder in the Spartacus Revolt 1919.
13 April 2017
Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Mark Jones, Nadine Rossol
Walter Benjamin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable philosopher and critic whose ideas, developed in the 1930s, became highly influential after his death while escaping the Holocaust.
10 February 2022
Featuring: Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger
Weber's The Protestant Ethic
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Max Weber's book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
27 March 2014
Featuring: Peter Ghosh, Sam Whimster, Linda Woodhead
20th-century translators (5)
Anna Akhmatova
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poetry of Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966) whose work was banned under Stalin and who lived under constant threat of the gulags.
18 January 2018
Featuring: Katharine Hodgson, Alexandra Harrington, Michael Basker
Jorge Luis Borges
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges.
4 January 2007
Featuring: Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn
Lawrence of Arabia
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Lawrence of Arabia, the legend and its context, an idea drawn from over 1200 suggested by listeners this autumn
5 December 2019
Featuring: Hussein Omar, Catriona Pennell, Neil Faulkner
Proust
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.
17 April 2003
Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser
Walter Benjamin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable philosopher and critic whose ideas, developed in the 1930s, became highly influential after his death while escaping the Holocaust.
10 February 2022
Featuring: Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger
Feminism and history (5)
Aphra Behn
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Aphra Behn, known for her plays for the Restoration stage such as The Rover and for her novel Oroonoko.
12 October 2017
Featuring: Janet Todd, Ros Ballaster, Claire Bowditch
Christine de Pizan
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Christine de Pizan (c1364-1430) who, according to Simone de Beauvoir, was the first woman to 'take up her pen in defence of her sex'.
8 June 2017
Featuring: Helen Swift, Miranda Griffin, Marilynn Desmond
Harriet Martineau
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Harriet Martineau who wrote extensively in the C19th on a wide range of subjects including abolition, and is called the mother of sociology.
8 December 2016
Featuring: Valerie Sanders, Karen O'Brien, Ella Dzelzainis
Mary Astell
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosopher Mary Astell (1666 – 1731) who has been described as "the first English feminist".
5 November 2020
Featuring: Hannah Dawson, Mark Goldie, Teresa Bejan
Temperance Movement
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the British experience of teetotalism from the early 19th Century when abstaining from alcohol was a way for the new urban workers to get on in life.
3 February 2022
Featuring: Annemarie McAllister, James Kneale, David Buckingham
20th-century French novelists (5)
Camus
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Nobel Prize winning Algerian-French writer and existentialist philosopher Albert Camus.
3 January 2008
Featuring: Peter Dunwoodie, David Walker, Christina Howells
Colette
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the novels and life of one of the most remarkable writers of the last century, whose Claudine series was first published under her husband's name.
27 January 2022
Featuring: Diana Holmes, Michèle Roberts, Belinda Jack
Proust
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.
17 April 2003
Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser
Sartre
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
7 October 2004
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells
Simone de Beauvoir
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.
22 October 2015
Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd
19th-century British short story writers (5)
Dickens
Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?
12 July 2001
Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen
Elizabeth Gaskell's novel North and South
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, who set her 1855 novel in a version of Manchester she called Milton in the county of Darkshire.
9 March 2017
Featuring: Sally Shuttleworth, Dinah Birch, Jenny Uglow
Rudyard Kipling
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Rudyard Kipling, a writer sometimes described as the poet of empire.
16 October 2014
Featuring: Howard Booth, Daniel Karlin, Jan Montefiore
Thomas Hardy's Poetry
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hardy's poems, which he prized far above the novels which made him famous and rich, and his ambition to be ranked alongside Shelley and Byron.
13 January 2022
Featuring: Mark Ford, Jane Thomas, Tim Armstrong
William Morris
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss some of the many aspects of William Morris: his activism, poetry and prose and his ideas on arts, crafts and work in an industrial world.
5 July 2018
Featuring: Ingrid Hanson, Marcus Waithe, Jane Thomas
Members of the Order of Merit (5)
Alfred Russel Wallace
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Victorian pioneer of evolutionary theory Alfred Russel Wallace.
21 March 2013
Featuring: Steve Jones, George Beccaloni, Ted Benton
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Dorothy Hodgkin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work, ideas and life of the woman who won the 1964 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her work on the structures of vitamin B12 and penicillin.
3 October 2019
Featuring: Georgina Ferry, Judith Howard, Patricia Fara
Paul Dirac
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Bristolian theoretical physicist, ranked alongside Einstein by his peers, who won a Nobel for his work on quantum mechanics.
5 March 2020
Featuring: Graham Farmelo, Valerie Gibson, David Berman
Thomas Hardy's Poetry
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hardy's poems, which he prized far above the novels which made him famous and rich, and his ambition to be ranked alongside Shelley and Byron.
13 January 2022
Featuring: Mark Ford, Jane Thomas, Tim Armstrong
Pantheists (5)
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
Spinoza
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Spinoza whose profound and complex ideas about God had him celebrated as an atheist in the 18th century.
3 May 2007
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham
Thomas Hardy's Poetry
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hardy's poems, which he prized far above the novels which made him famous and rich, and his ambition to be ranked alongside Shelley and Byron.
13 January 2022
Featuring: Mark Ford, Jane Thomas, Tim Armstrong
Thoreau and the American Idyll
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the American 19th century writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau
15 January 2009
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Tim Morris, Stephen Fender
Former empires (5)
Babylon
Melvyn Bragg discusses the truth behind Babylon, the world’s oldest and most enigmatic of empires; from the the Tower of Babel and the Hanging Gardens to the Whore of Babylon.
3 June 2004
Featuring: Eleanor Robson, Irving Finkel, Andrew George
Byzantium
Melvyn Bragg discusses the culture, history and legacy of the eastern Byzantine Empire, and examines why it has so often been sidelined and undermined by historians.
19 July 2001
Featuring: Charlotte Roueché, John Julius Norwich, Liz James
The British Empire
Melvyn Bragg discusses the British Empire, what drove Britain to follow the imperial road and what was its legacy?
8 November 2001
Featuring: Maria Misra, Peter Cain, Catherine Hall
The Hittites
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the empire based in the Land of Hatti during the Late Bronze Age, in modern Turkey, and the discoveries there over the last century.
23 December 2021
Featuring: Claudia Glatz, Ilgi Gercek, Christoph Bachhuber
The Sassanid Empire
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Sassanian Empire, a grand imperial rival to the Roman Empire.
13 December 2007
Featuring: Hugh N. Kennedy, Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis, James Howard-Johnston
5th-century BC philosophers (5)
Heraclitus
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the ancient Greek thinker Heraclitus, immortalised by later scholars as the Weeping Philosopher.
8 December 2011
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Peter Adamson, James Warren
Plato's Gorgias
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock
25 November 2021
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh
Pythagoras
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and influence of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans.
10 December 2009
Featuring: Ian Stewart, Serafina Cuomo, John O'Connor
Socrates
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.
27 September 2007
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett
The Buddha
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life of Siddhartha Gautama, the originator of Buddhism, and examines why his teachings have now become one of the fastest growing religions of the Western world.
14 March 2002
Featuring: Peter Harvey, Kate Crosby, Mahinda Deegalle
Ancient Greek philosophers of mind (5)
Galen
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Roman physician and medical theorist Galen.
10 October 2013
Featuring: Vivian Nutton, Helen King, Caroline Petit
Heraclitus
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the ancient Greek thinker Heraclitus, immortalised by later scholars as the Weeping Philosopher.
8 December 2011
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Peter Adamson, James Warren
Plato's Gorgias
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock
25 November 2021
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh
Pythagoras
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and influence of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans.
10 December 2009
Featuring: Ian Stewart, Serafina Cuomo, John O'Connor
Socrates
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.
27 September 2007
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett
Ancient Greek political philosophers (5)
Heraclitus
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the ancient Greek thinker Heraclitus, immortalised by later scholars as the Weeping Philosopher.
8 December 2011
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Peter Adamson, James Warren
Plato's Gorgias
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock
25 November 2021
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh
Pythagoras
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and influence of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans.
10 December 2009
Featuring: Ian Stewart, Serafina Cuomo, John O'Connor
Socrates
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.
27 September 2007
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett
Xenophon
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the ancient Greek historian and soldier Xenophon.
26 May 2011
Featuring: Paul Cartledge, Edith Hall, Simon Goldhill
Art movements (5)
Modernist Utopias
Melvyn Bragg discusses the mad, bad world of modern utopias where babies are hatched from test tubes, where women live without men, where machines have taken over, and where the poor are exterminated.
10 March 2005
Featuring: John Carey, Steven Connor, Laura Marcus
Surrealism
Melvyn Bragg discusses surrealism, the art of the unconscious, repression, desire and sex.
15 November 2001
Featuring: Dawn Adiss, Malcolm Bowie, Darian Leader
The Baroque Movement
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the culture of the Baroque, from Bach and Caavaggio to the Colonnades of St Peter’s.
20 November 2008
Featuring: T. C. W. Blanning, Nigel Aston, Helen Hills
The Decadent Movement
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the influence of Baudelaire and Walter Pater on writers and artists in Britain in the 1890s, pursuing art for its own sake and not with moral aims.
18 November 2021
Featuring: Neil Sammells, Kate Hext, Alex Murray
The Romantics
Melvyn Bragg discusses the ideals and legacy of Romanticism, a literary and artistic movement at the turn of the 19th century which gave rise to the great poetry of Wordsworth, Shelley and Keats.
12 October 2000
Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Rosemary Ashton, Nicholas Roe
Analytic philosophers (5)
Bergson and Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.
9 May 2019
Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Iris Murdoch
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the growing prominence of the philosophy of one of the most celebrated novelists of the 20th century, who developed her ideas in response to WWII.
21 October 2021
Featuring: Anil Gomes, Anne Rowe, Miles Leeson
William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience
Melvyn Bragg and guests Jonathan Ree, John Haldane and Gwen Griffith-Dickson discuss The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James.
13 May 2010
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, John Haldane, Gwen Griffith-Dickson
Wittgenstein
Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.
4 December 2003
Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn
English women novelists (5)
Aphra Behn
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Aphra Behn, known for her plays for the Restoration stage such as The Rover and for her novel Oroonoko.
12 October 2017
Featuring: Janet Todd, Ros Ballaster, Claire Bowditch
Elizabeth Gaskell's novel North and South
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, who set her 1855 novel in a version of Manchester she called Milton in the county of Darkshire.
9 March 2017
Featuring: Sally Shuttleworth, Dinah Birch, Jenny Uglow
Fanny Burney
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the 18th-century writer Fanny Burney, also known as Frances D'Arblay and Frances Burney, best known for her novel Evelina.
23 April 2015
Featuring: Nicole Pohl, Judith Hawley, John Mullan
Iris Murdoch
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the growing prominence of the philosophy of one of the most celebrated novelists of the 20th century, who developed her ideas in response to WWII.
21 October 2021
Featuring: Anil Gomes, Anne Rowe, Miles Leeson
Mary Wollstonecraft
Melvyn Bragg and guests John Mullan, Karen O'Brien and Barbara Taylor discuss the life and ideas of the pioneering British Enlightenment thinker Mary Wollstonecraft.
31 December 2009
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Mullan, Barbara Taylor
Rhetoric theorists (5)
Benjamin Franklin
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.
1 March 2012
Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Edward Gibbon
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the writer of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, one of the most celebrated works of its kind.
17 June 2021
Featuring: David Womersley, Charlotte Roberts, Karen O’Brien
Hobbes
Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.
1 December 2005
Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett
Milton
Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.
7 March 2002
Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden
Rationality theorists (5)
David Hume
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.
6 October 2011
Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Popper
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.
8 February 2007
Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright
Socrates
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.
27 September 2007
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett
Weber's The Protestant Ethic
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Max Weber's book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
27 March 2014
Featuring: Peter Ghosh, Sam Whimster, Linda Woodhead
Epic poets (5)
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
Milton
Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.
7 March 2002
Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden
Ovid
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Roman poet whose influence is arguably greater than any poet of the classical age, besides Homer, even though his writing led to his exile.
29 April 2021
Featuring: Maria Wyke, Gail Trimble, Dunstan Lowe
William Morris
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss some of the many aspects of William Morris: his activism, poetry and prose and his ideas on arts, crafts and work in an industrial world.
5 July 2018
Featuring: Ingrid Hanson, Marcus Waithe, Jane Thomas
Golden Age Latin writers (5)
Catullus
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poetry of Catullus - some of the greatest verse of his time, and some of the most scurrilous - and his influence on Roman and later poetry
11 January 2020
Featuring: Gail Trimble, Simon Smith, Maria Wyke
Cicero
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Cicero's political ideas on laws, duty, tyrants and the republic, which he developed as the Roman Republic was threatened by Caesar and civil wars.
25 January 2018
Featuring: Melissa Lane, Catherine Steel, Valentina Arena
Horace
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Horace, one of the greatest poets of his age, the origin of phrases such as carpe diem, nil desperandum and dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.
15 November 2018
Featuring: Emily Gowers, William Fitzgerald, Ellen O'Gorman
Julius Caesar
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and reputation of Julius Caesar, one of the most intriguing figures of Roman history.
2 October 2014
Featuring: Christopher Pelling, Catherine Steel, Maria Wyke
Ovid
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Roman poet whose influence is arguably greater than any poet of the classical age, besides Homer, even though his writing led to his exile.
29 April 2021
Featuring: Maria Wyke, Gail Trimble, Dunstan Lowe
Members of the French Academy of Sciences (5)
Humboldt
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Prussian naturalist and explorer, Alexander Von Humboldt. A hero in South America; Charles Darwin described him as ‘the greatest scientific traveller who ever lived’.
28 September 2006
Featuring: Jason Wilson, Patricia Fara, Jim Secord
Lamarck and Natural Selection
Melvyn Bragg discusses Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, the 18th century French scientist, and his theory of Natural Selection. Who was he and how far did he pave the way for Darwin?
26 December 2003
Featuring: Sandy Knapp, Steve Jones, Simon Conway Morris
Louis Pasteur
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Louis Pasteur, microbiologist, developer of vaccines, saviour of the French beer and wine industries and preserver of milk.
18 May 2017
Featuring: Andrew Mendelsohn, Anne Hardy, Michael Worboys
Michael Faraday
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Michael Faraday, the most famous British scientist of the 19th century.
25 December 2015
Featuring: Geoffrey Cantor, Laura Herz, Frank James
Pierre-Simon Laplace
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great French mathematician who tackled questions on the stability of the Solar System and planet rotation and devised the basis for metrication
8 April 2021
Featuring: Marcus du Sautoy, Timothy Gowers, Colva Roney-Dougal
19th-century economists (5)
David Ricardo
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Ricardo's argument that Britain's economy was being held back by the interests of landlords and protectionism, and his call for free trade.
25 March 2021
Featuring: Matthew Watson, Helen Paul, Richard Whatmore
Harriet Martineau
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Harriet Martineau who wrote extensively in the C19th on a wide range of subjects including abolition, and is called the mother of sociology.
8 December 2016
Featuring: Valerie Sanders, Karen O'Brien, Ella Dzelzainis
John Ruskin
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and work of John Ruskin, art and social critic, and one of the most influential figures of the Victorian era.
31 March 2005
Featuring: Dinah Birch, Keith Hanley, Stefan Collini
Marx
Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.
14 July 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones
Mill
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.
18 May 2006
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan
People celebrated in the Lutheran liturgical calendar (5)
Albrecht Dürer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Dürer, the creator of some of the most memorable images in the late Renaissance from his woodcut of a rhinoceros to his stunning self portraits.
12 November 2020
Featuring: Susan Foister, Giulia Bartrum, Ulinka Rublack
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Bonhoeffer's ideas about Christian ethics, the role of the Church in a secular world, and his attempts to overthrow Hitler.
27 September 2018
Featuring: Stephen Plant, Eleanor McLaughlin, Tom Greggs
John Wesley and Methodism
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the difference John Wesley made during the Christian Revival of the 18th Century, developing Methodism into a major movement around the world
10 December 2020
Featuring: Stephen Plant, Eryn White, William Gibson
Kierkegaard
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.
20 March 2008
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt
Mary Magdalene
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Mary Magdalene, one of the best-known figures in the Bible.
25 February 2016
Featuring: Joanne Anderson, Eamon Duffy, Joan Taylor
English philosophers (5)
John Ruskin
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and work of John Ruskin, art and social critic, and one of the most influential figures of the Victorian era.
31 March 2005
Featuring: Dinah Birch, Keith Hanley, Stefan Collini
Mary Astell
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosopher Mary Astell (1666 – 1731) who has been described as "the first English feminist".
5 November 2020
Featuring: Hannah Dawson, Mark Goldie, Teresa Bejan
Mary Wollstonecraft
Melvyn Bragg and guests John Mullan, Karen O'Brien and Barbara Taylor discuss the life and ideas of the pioneering British Enlightenment thinker Mary Wollstonecraft.
31 December 2009
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Mullan, Barbara Taylor
Roger Bacon
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss medieval English scholar Roger Bacon, an early pioneer of science who became known as Doctor Mirabilis.
20 April 2017
Featuring: Jack Cunningham, Amanda Power, Elly Truitt
William Hazlitt
Melvyn Bragg and guests Jonathan Bate, Uttara Natarajan and AC Grayling discuss the life and works of William Hazlitt.
8 April 2010
Featuring: Jonathan Bate, A. C. Grayling, Uttara Natarajan
Philosophy of religion (5)
Deism
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Enlightenment idea that God created the universe and then stood back, for it to be understood by reason alone and not revelation.
8 October 2020
Featuring: Richard Serjeantson, Katie East, Thomas Ahnert
Free Will(500th programme)
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the problem of free will - the extent to which we are able to choose our actions.
10 March 2011
Featuring: Simon Blackburn, Helen Beebee, Galen Strawson
Humanism
Melvyn Bragg examines what happened to Humanism after its invention by Cicero in the first century BC. What does humanism actually mean and is it still a classical force in contemporary ideas?
8 February 2001
Featuring: Tony Davies, Lisa Jardine, Simon Goldhill
Miracles
Melvyn Bragg discusses the history of miracles, the subject of fierce theological debate, intense popular piety and serious medical study.
25 September 2008
Featuring: Martin Palmer, Janet Soskice, Justin Champion
Science and Religion
Melvyn Bragg discusses the relationship and the areas of conflict between science and religion, and examines why mankind seeks to find all encompassing answers in these two realms.
25 January 2001
Featuring: Stephen Jay Gould, John Haldane, Hilary Rose
French socialists (5)
Camus
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Nobel Prize winning Algerian-French writer and existentialist philosopher Albert Camus.
3 January 2008
Featuring: Peter Dunwoodie, David Walker, Christina Howells
George Sand
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work and life of Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin who in C19th France wrote many extremely successful novels, under the name George Sand
6 February 2020
Featuring: Belinda Jack, Angela Ryan, Nigel Harkness
Sartre
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
7 October 2004
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells
Simone Weil
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil. Admired by Albert Camus and Iris Murdoch, she achieved a great deal in her short life.
15 November 2012
Featuring: Beatrice Han-Pile, Stephen Plant, David Levy
Simone de Beauvoir
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.
22 October 2015
Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd
Légion d'honneur refusals (5)
Camus
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Nobel Prize winning Algerian-French writer and existentialist philosopher Albert Camus.
3 January 2008
Featuring: Peter Dunwoodie, David Walker, Christina Howells
George Sand
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work and life of Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin who in C19th France wrote many extremely successful novels, under the name George Sand
6 February 2020
Featuring: Belinda Jack, Angela Ryan, Nigel Harkness
Sartre
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
7 October 2004
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells
Simone de Beauvoir
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.
22 October 2015
Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd
The Curies
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the scientific achievements of the Curie family, Marie and Pierre and their daughter Irene Joliot-Curie, all three of whom won Nobel Prizes.
26 March 2015
Featuring: Patricia Fara, Robert Fox, Steven T Bramwell
American male non-fiction writers (5)
Auden
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss WH Auden's life and poetry from Europe before WWII, reflecting on his travels to Spain, China and Germany and the rise of totalitarianism.
19 December 2019
Featuring: Mark Ford, Janet Montefiore, Jeremy Noel-Tod
Benjamin Franklin
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.
1 March 2012
Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara
Thomas Paine's Common Sense
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.
21 January 2016
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson
Thoreau and the American Idyll
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the American 19th century writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau
15 January 2009
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Tim Morris, Stephen Fender
Washington and the American Revolution
Melvyn Bragg discusses the first President of the United States, George Washington, and the people and ideas that saw the American Revolution overthrow British rule in 1775.
24 June 2004
Featuring: Carol Berkin, Simon Middleton, Colin Bonwick
Wars involving France (5)
Napoleon's Retreat from Russia
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss why Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812, thought he was victorious yet had to retreat, losing most of his army and, soon after, his empire.
19 September 2019
Featuring: Janet Hartley, Michael Rowe, Michael Rapport
The Boxer Rebellion
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Boxer Rebellion, when the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists purged China of foreign influences in the summer of 1900.
19 March 2009
Featuring: Frances Wood, Rana Mitter, R. G. Tiedemann
The Taiping Rebellion
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Taiping Rebellion, a Chinese civil war which claimed around 20 million lives in the 19th century.
24 February 2011
Featuring: Rana Mitter, Frances Wood, Julia Lovell
The Thirty Years' War
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss a topic suggested by listeners: the war which was centred on the Holy Roman Empire from 1618 and was unequalled in scale until C20th
6 December 2018
Featuring: Peter Wilson, Ulinka Rublack, Toby Osborne
Third Crusade
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Third Crusade, from death of the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick Barbarossa, to the famous encounter between Richard I and Saladin.
29 November 2001
Featuring: Jonathan Riley-Smith, Carole Hillenbrand, Tariq Ali
Alumni of Trinity College Dublin (5)
Bishop Berkeley
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the philosopher George Berkeley, one of the most significant thinkers of the 18th century.
20 March 2014
Featuring: Peter Millican, Tom Stoneham, Michela Massimi
Edmund Burke
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke, whose views on revolution in America and France were hugely influential.
3 June 2010
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Richard Bourke, John Keane
Oscar Wilde
Melvyn Bragg discusses Oscar Wilde, the Aesthetes and his literary legacy. Was Wilde a reactionary - the last of the romantics - or was he the midwife to modernism?
6 December 2001
Featuring: Valentine Cunningham, Regenia Gagnier, Neil Sammells
Samuel Beckett
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the author of Waiting for Godot, who lived in Paris and wrote in French as he found that more difficult than writing in English
17 January 2019
Featuring: Steven Connor, Laura Salisbury, Mark Nixon
Swift's A Modest Proposal
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jonathan Swift's satirical 1729 pamphlet A Modest Proposal, which reveals much about attitudes to the Irish and the poor in 18th-Century Britain.
29 January 2009
Featuring: John Mullan, Judith Hawley, Ian McBride
Astronomical objects known since antiquity (5)
Mars
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the planet Mars. Named after the Roman god of war, Mars has been a source of continual fascination.
11 January 2007
Featuring: John Zarnecki, Colin Pillinger, Monica Grady
Saturn
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Saturn, the most distant planet easily visible to the human eye, with over 60 moons and, with its rings, one of the most striking sights in space.
14 January 2016
Featuring: Carolin Crawford, Michele Dougherty, Andrew Coates
The Moon
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the origins, science and mythology of the moon. Man may have landed on the moon, but our 'twin planet' in many ways still remains a mystery.
3 November 2011
Featuring: Paul Murdin, Carolin Crawford, Ian Crawford
The Sun
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the science of the sun, source of all our energy.
10 July 2014
Featuring: Carolin Crawford, Yvonne Elsworth, Louise Harra
Venus
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Earth's neighbouring planet, once thought very similar but now known to be extremely volcanic with a surface temperature of 450C.
27 December 2018
Featuring: Carolin Crawford, Colin Wilson, Andrew Coates
Political realists (5)
Clausewitz and On War
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss On War, the 19th-century treatise on the theory of warfare by the Prussian soldier Carl von Clausewitz.
17 May 2012
Featuring: Saul David, Hew Strachan, Beatrice Heuser
Hobbes
Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.
1 December 2005
Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett
Machiavelli and the Italian City States
Melvyn Bragg discusses the political philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli. Inspired by the model of Cesare Borgia, he wrote a notorious manual of power still read today.
9 December 2004
Featuring: Quentin Skinner, Evelyn Welch, Lisa Jardine
Sun Tzu and The Art of War
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Chinese military adviser Sun Tzu from the 6th century BC and the influential work of military strategy associated with him, The Art of War.
1 March 2018
Featuring: Hilde de Weerdt, Tim Barrett, Imre Galambos
Thucydides
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ancient Greek historian Thucydides and his work entitled The History of the Peloponnesian War.
29 January 2015
Featuring: Paul Cartledge, Katherine Harloe, Neville Morley
Classical humanists (5)
Avicenna
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Avicenna, among the most important philosophers in the history of Islam.
8 November 2007
Featuring: Peter Adamson, Amira Bennison, Nader El-Bizri
Cicero
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Cicero's political ideas on laws, duty, tyrants and the republic, which he developed as the Roman Republic was threatened by Caesar and civil wars.
25 January 2018
Featuring: Melissa Lane, Catherine Steel, Valentina Arena
Confucius
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosophy of Confucius, a body of ideas which, more than any other philosophy, has defined what it is to be Chinese.
1 November 2001
Featuring: Frances Wood, Tim Barrett, Tao Tao Liu
Socrates
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.
27 September 2007
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett
The Buddha
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life of Siddhartha Gautama, the originator of Buddhism, and examines why his teachings have now become one of the fastest growing religions of the Western world.
14 March 2002
Featuring: Peter Harvey, Kate Crosby, Mahinda Deegalle
Trope theorists (5)
Cicero
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Cicero's political ideas on laws, duty, tyrants and the republic, which he developed as the Roman Republic was threatened by Caesar and civil wars.
25 January 2018
Featuring: Melissa Lane, Catherine Steel, Valentina Arena
Dickens
Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?
12 July 2001
Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen
Jorge Luis Borges
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges.
4 January 2007
Featuring: Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn
Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce's groundbreaking 1916 novel about growing up in Catholic Ireland.
26 November 2009
Featuring: Roy Foster, Katherine Mullin, Jeri Johnson
The Venerable Bede
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Venerable Bede, who revolutionised history and scholarship, and became adopted by Rome as the last of the founding fathers of Christian religion.
25 November 2004
Featuring: Richard Gameson, Sarah Foot, Michelle Brown
Recipients of the Pour le Mérite (civil class) (5)
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Gauss, 'prince of mathematicians', including those on number theory, geometry, probability theory, astronomy and electromagnetism.
30 November 2017
Featuring: Marcus du Sautoy, Colva Roney-Dougal, Nick Evans
Darwin: On the Origins of Charles Darwin
Melvyn Bragg presents a series about the life and work of Charles Darwin. Darwin's early life and time at Cambridge, where his interests shifted from religion to natural science.
5 January 2009
Featuring: Jim Moore, Steve Jones, David Norman, Colin Higgins
Humboldt
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Prussian naturalist and explorer, Alexander Von Humboldt. A hero in South America; Charles Darwin described him as ‘the greatest scientific traveller who ever lived’.
28 September 2006
Featuring: Jason Wilson, Patricia Fara, Jim Secord
Michael Faraday
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Michael Faraday, the most famous British scientist of the 19th century.
25 December 2015
Featuring: Geoffrey Cantor, Laura Herz, Frank James
Popper
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.
8 February 2007
Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright
University of Göttingen alumni (5)
Bismarck
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the original Iron Chancellor, Otto Von Bismarck, one of 19th Century Europe’s most influential statesmen and the founder of modern Germany.
22 March 2007
Featuring: Richard J Evans, Christopher Clark, Katharine Lerman
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Gauss, 'prince of mathematicians', including those on number theory, geometry, probability theory, astronomy and electromagnetism.
30 November 2017
Featuring: Marcus du Sautoy, Colva Roney-Dougal, Nick Evans
Humboldt
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Prussian naturalist and explorer, Alexander Von Humboldt. A hero in South America; Charles Darwin described him as ‘the greatest scientific traveller who ever lived’.
28 September 2006
Featuring: Jason Wilson, Patricia Fara, Jim Secord
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
Weber's The Protestant Ethic
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Max Weber's book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
27 March 2014
Featuring: Peter Ghosh, Sam Whimster, Linda Woodhead
Conversationalists (5)
Fanny Burney
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the 18th-century writer Fanny Burney, also known as Frances D'Arblay and Frances Burney, best known for her novel Evelina.
23 April 2015
Featuring: Nicole Pohl, Judith Hawley, John Mullan
Germaine de Staël
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas, works and life of Germaine de Stael (1766-1817), a literary critic, author, opponent of Napoleon and developer of Romanticism.
16 November 2017
Featuring: Catriona Seth, Alison Finch, Katherine Astbury
Johnson
Melvyn Bragg discusses Samuel Johnson, a giant of 18th century literature, language and letters, and perhaps the most quotable Englishman to have ever lifted a pen.
27 October 2005
Featuring: John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Judith Hawley
Oscar Wilde
Melvyn Bragg discusses Oscar Wilde, the Aesthetes and his literary legacy. Was Wilde a reactionary - the last of the romantics - or was he the midwife to modernism?
6 December 2001
Featuring: Valentine Cunningham, Regenia Gagnier, Neil Sammells
Proust
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.
17 April 2003
Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser
19th-century British writers (5)
Ada Lovelace
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 19th century mathematician and hard living daughter of Lord Byron, Ada Lovelace.
6 March 2008
Featuring: Patricia Fara, Doron Swade, John Fuegi
Alfred Russel Wallace
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Victorian pioneer of evolutionary theory Alfred Russel Wallace.
21 March 2013
Featuring: Steve Jones, George Beccaloni, Ted Benton
Christina Rossetti
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Victorian poet Christina Rossetti.
1 December 2011
Featuring: Dinah Birch, Rhian Williams, Nicholas Shrimpton
Harriet Martineau
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Harriet Martineau who wrote extensively in the C19th on a wide range of subjects including abolition, and is called the mother of sociology.
8 December 2016
Featuring: Valerie Sanders, Karen O'Brien, Ella Dzelzainis
Mill
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.
18 May 2006
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan
British cultural critics (5)
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
David Hume
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.
6 October 2011
Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris
Mill
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.
18 May 2006
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan
Popper
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.
8 February 2007
Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright
Thomas Paine's Common Sense
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.
21 January 2016
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson
French atheists (5)
Camus
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Nobel Prize winning Algerian-French writer and existentialist philosopher Albert Camus.
3 January 2008
Featuring: Peter Dunwoodie, David Walker, Christina Howells
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
23 May 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene
Proust
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.
17 April 2003
Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser
Simone de Beauvoir
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.
22 October 2015
Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd
The Curies
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the scientific achievements of the Curie family, Marie and Pierre and their daughter Irene Joliot-Curie, all three of whom won Nobel Prizes.
26 March 2015
Featuring: Patricia Fara, Robert Fox, Steven T Bramwell
University of Paris alumni (5)
Erasmus
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the Dutch humanist scholar Desiderius Erasmus, one of the most significant figures of the Renaissance.
9 February 2012
Featuring: Diarmaid MacCulloch, Eamon Duffy, Jill Kraye
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
23 May 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene
Simone de Beauvoir
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.
22 October 2015
Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd
St Thomas Aquinas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss St Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic Church's foremost western philosopher and theologian.
17 September 2009
Featuring: Martin Palmer, John Haldane, Annabel Brett
The Curies
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the scientific achievements of the Curie family, Marie and Pierre and their daughter Irene Joliot-Curie, all three of whom won Nobel Prizes.
26 March 2015
Featuring: Patricia Fara, Robert Fox, Steven T Bramwell
Philosophical methodology (5)
Empiricism
Melvyn Bragg discusses the development of the idea formulated by John Locke that all knowledge arises from experience, and looks at its effect on the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution.
10 June 2004
Featuring: Judith Hawley, Murray Pittock, Jonathan Rée
Ordinary language philosophy
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Ordinary Language Philosophy, one of the most important British contributions to 20th-century thought.
7 November 2013
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Ray Monk, Julia Tanney
Phenomenology
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosophical movement phenomenology.
22 January 2015
Featuring: Simon Glendinning, Joanna Hodge, Stephen Mulhall
Scepticism
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the history of philosophical scepticism.
5 July 2012
Featuring: Peter Millican, Melissa Lane, Jill Kraye
The Examined Life
Melvyn Bragg discusses what self-examination through philosophy can teach us about living our lives, and where it ranks in our quest for self-knowledge alongside science, the arts and religion.
9 May 2002
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Julian Baggini
Philosophical problems (5)
Cogito Ergo Sum
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss one of the most famous statements in philosophy, 'Cogito ergo sum', Rene Descartes' attempt to establish what we can truly know.
28 April 2011
Featuring: Susan James, John Cottingham, Stephen Mulhall
Free Will(500th programme)
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the problem of free will - the extent to which we are able to choose our actions.
10 March 2011
Featuring: Simon Blackburn, Helen Beebee, Galen Strawson
Ockham's Razor
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosophical idea of Ockham’s Razor and the medieval philosopher who gave his name to it, William of Ockham.
31 May 2007
Featuring: Anthony Kenny, Marilyn Adams, Richard Alan Cross
Ordinary language philosophy
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Ordinary Language Philosophy, one of the most important British contributions to 20th-century thought.
7 November 2013
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Ray Monk, Julia Tanney
The Mind/Body Problem
Melvyn Bragg discusses the history of thought about the mind/body problem in philosophy. Does the mind rule the body or the body rule the mind? And where does the mind reside?
13 January 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Julian Baggini, Sue James
Writers about globalization (5)
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Ibn Khaldun
Melvyn Bragg and guests Robert Hoyland, Robert Irwin and Hugh Kennedy discuss the life and ideas of the 14th-century Arab philosopher of history Ibn Khaldun.
4 February 2010
Featuring: Robert Hoyland, Robert Graham Irwin, Hugh N. Kennedy
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
23 May 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene
Marx
Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.
14 July 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones
Popper
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.
8 February 2007
Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright
Charles Darwin (5)
Alfred Russel Wallace
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Victorian pioneer of evolutionary theory Alfred Russel Wallace.
21 March 2013
Featuring: Steve Jones, George Beccaloni, Ted Benton
Chance and Design
Melvyn Bragg discusses the questions and theories surrounding the idea of a grand design in the universe. Can the concept of the randomness of evolution be compatible with a belief in God?
13 February 2003
Featuring: Simon Conway Morris, Sandy Knapp, John Brooke
Darwin: On the Origins of Charles Darwin
Melvyn Bragg presents a series about the life and work of Charles Darwin. Darwin's early life and time at Cambridge, where his interests shifted from religion to natural science.
5 January 2009
Featuring: Jim Moore, Steve Jones, David Norman, Colin Higgins
Darwin: The Voyage of the Beagle
Melvyn Bragg presents a series about the life and work of Charles Darwin. Darwin's expedition aboard the Beagle and how it influenced and provided evidence for his theories.
6 January 2009
Featuring: Jim Moore, Steve Jones, David Norman, Jenny Clack
The Great Exhibition of 1851
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 1851 Great Exhibition. Housed in the magnificent Crystal Palace, the exhibition showcased Victorian Britain's technical ingenuity and industrial might.
27 April 2006
Featuring: Jeremy Black, Hermione Hobhouse, Clive Emsley
Modernism (5)
Chekhov
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the great Russian writer Anton Chekhov.
14 March 2013
Featuring: Catriona Kelly, Cynthia Marsh, Rosamund Bartlett
Existentialism
Melvyn Bragg discusses existentialism, a twentieth century philosophy of everyday life concerned with the individual, and his or her place within the world.
28 June 2001
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Christina Howells, Simon Critchley
Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce's groundbreaking 1916 novel about growing up in Catholic Ireland.
26 November 2009
Featuring: Roy Foster, Katherine Mullin, Jeri Johnson
Modernist Utopias
Melvyn Bragg discusses the mad, bad world of modern utopias where babies are hatched from test tubes, where women live without men, where machines have taken over, and where the poor are exterminated.
10 March 2005
Featuring: John Carey, Steven Connor, Laura Marcus
The Avant Garde's Decline and Fall in the 20th Century
Melvyn Bragg examines the social and aesthetic impact of the Avant Garde and discusses whether it has failed in making painting relevant in the 20th century.
25 February 1999
Featuring: Eric Hobsbawm, Frances Morris
Consciousness researchers and theorists (5)
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aldous Huxley's dystopian 1932 novel Brave New World and its vision of a future of test tube babies, free love and round-the-clock surveillance.
9 April 2009
Featuring: David Bradshaw, Daniel Pick, Michèle Barrett
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
David Hume
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.
6 October 2011
Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris
Popper
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.
8 February 2007
Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright
William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience
Melvyn Bragg and guests Jonathan Ree, John Haldane and Gwen Griffith-Dickson discuss The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James.
13 May 2010
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, John Haldane, Gwen Griffith-Dickson
Scientific revolution (5)
The Encyclopédie
Melvyn Bragg discusses the French encyclopédie, one of the great achievements of the Enlightenment with contributors such as Voltaire, Rousseau, D’Alembert and Dennis Diderot.
26 October 2006
Featuring: Judith Hawley, Caroline Warman, David Wootton
The Enlightenment in Britain
Melvyn Bragg examines the part British thinkers played in the Enlightenment in the 18th century, and examines whether the shifts of thought in those years provided the platform for the modern world.
18 January 2001
Featuring: Roy Porter, Linda Colley, Jeremy Black
The Scientific method
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Scientific Method, the systematic and analytical approach to scientific discovery.
26 January 2012
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, John Worrall, Michela Massimi
The Scottish Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg discusses the emergence and impact of the Scottish Enlightenment which was led by the philosopher David Hume and the father of modern economics, Adam Smith.
5 December 2002
Featuring: Tom Devine, Karen O'Brien, Alexander Broadie
Women and Enlightenment Science
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the role played by women in Enlightenment science.
4 November 2010
Featuring: Patricia Fara, Karen O'Brien, Judith Hawley
Metaphysics of mind (5)
Cogito Ergo Sum
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss one of the most famous statements in philosophy, 'Cogito ergo sum', Rene Descartes' attempt to establish what we can truly know.
28 April 2011
Featuring: Susan James, John Cottingham, Stephen Mulhall
Consciousness
Melvyn Bragg examines why the elusiveness and impenetrability of consciousness continues to fascinate both philosophers and scientists. Is the human mind just not built to understand its own basis?
25 November 1999
Featuring: Ted Honderich, Roger Penrose
Perception and the Senses
Melvyn Bragg discusses perception: how the brain reacts to the mass of data continually crowding it and examines what governs our perception of the world.
28 April 2005
Featuring: Richard Gregory, David Moore, Gemma Calvert
The Brain and Consciousness
Melvyn Bragg discusses how our increased knowledge of the functioning of the brain has changed our feelings about our own natures, and our approach to the behaviour and treatment of others.
19 November 1998
Featuring: Steven Rose, Dan Robinson
The Mind/Body Problem
Melvyn Bragg discusses the history of thought about the mind/body problem in philosophy. Does the mind rule the body or the body rule the mind? And where does the mind reside?
13 January 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Julian Baggini, Sue James
English travel writers (5)
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aldous Huxley's dystopian 1932 novel Brave New World and its vision of a future of test tube babies, free love and round-the-clock surveillance.
9 April 2009
Featuring: David Bradshaw, Daniel Pick, Michèle Barrett
Darwin: On the Origins of Charles Darwin
Melvyn Bragg presents a series about the life and work of Charles Darwin. Darwin's early life and time at Cambridge, where his interests shifted from religion to natural science.
5 January 2009
Featuring: Jim Moore, Steve Jones, David Norman, Colin Higgins
Dickens
Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?
12 July 2001
Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen
Johnson
Melvyn Bragg discusses Samuel Johnson, a giant of 18th century literature, language and letters, and perhaps the most quotable Englishman to have ever lifted a pen.
27 October 2005
Featuring: John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Judith Hawley
Mary Wollstonecraft
Melvyn Bragg and guests John Mullan, Karen O'Brien and Barbara Taylor discuss the life and ideas of the pioneering British Enlightenment thinker Mary Wollstonecraft.
31 December 2009
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Mullan, Barbara Taylor
Neuropsychological assessment (5)
Consciousness
Melvyn Bragg examines why the elusiveness and impenetrability of consciousness continues to fascinate both philosophers and scientists. Is the human mind just not built to understand its own basis?
25 November 1999
Featuring: Ted Honderich, Roger Penrose
Memory
Melvyn Bragg discusses the significance of memory. Is it a repository of events waiting to be plucked to consciousness?
29 May 2003
Featuring: Martin Conway, Mike Kopelman, Kim Graham
Memory and Culture
Melvyn Bragg discusses how our ways of remembering have changed and explores whether memory itself can remain forever unchanged in its role within our psychology.
27 May 1999
Featuring: Malcolm Bowie, Nancy Wood
Perception and the Senses
Melvyn Bragg discusses perception: how the brain reacts to the mass of data continually crowding it and examines what governs our perception of the world.
28 April 2005
Featuring: Richard Gregory, David Moore, Gemma Calvert
The Brain and Consciousness
Melvyn Bragg discusses how our increased knowledge of the functioning of the brain has changed our feelings about our own natures, and our approach to the behaviour and treatment of others.
19 November 1998
Featuring: Steven Rose, Dan Robinson
English feminist writers, English feminists (5)
Annie Besant
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life of 19th-century writer and campaigner Annie Besant.
21 June 2012
Featuring: Lawrence Goldman, David Stack, Yasmin Khan
Aphra Behn
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Aphra Behn, known for her plays for the Restoration stage such as The Rover and for her novel Oroonoko.
12 October 2017
Featuring: Janet Todd, Ros Ballaster, Claire Bowditch
Mary Astell
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosopher Mary Astell (1666 – 1731) who has been described as "the first English feminist".
5 November 2020
Featuring: Hannah Dawson, Mark Goldie, Teresa Bejan
Mary Wollstonecraft
Melvyn Bragg and guests John Mullan, Karen O'Brien and Barbara Taylor discuss the life and ideas of the pioneering British Enlightenment thinker Mary Wollstonecraft.
31 December 2009
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Mullan, Barbara Taylor
Mill
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.
18 May 2006
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan
British Nobel laureates, English Nobel laureates (5)
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Dorothy Hodgkin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work, ideas and life of the woman who won the 1964 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her work on the structures of vitamin B12 and penicillin.
3 October 2019
Featuring: Georgina Ferry, Judith Howard, Patricia Fara
Paul Dirac
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Bristolian theoretical physicist, ranked alongside Einstein by his peers, who won a Nobel for his work on quantum mechanics.
5 March 2020
Featuring: Graham Farmelo, Valerie Gibson, David Berman
Rudyard Kipling
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Rudyard Kipling, a writer sometimes described as the poet of empire.
16 October 2014
Featuring: Howard Booth, Daniel Karlin, Jan Montefiore
Rutherford
Melvyn Bragg discusses Ernest Rutherford. He is seen as the father of nuclear science, a great charismatic figure who mapped the landscape of the sub-atomic world.
19 February 2004
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Jim Al-Khalili, Patricia Fara
Irish male dramatists and playwrights, Irish expatriates in France (5)
Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce's groundbreaking 1916 novel about growing up in Catholic Ireland.
26 November 2009
Featuring: Roy Foster, Katherine Mullin, Jeri Johnson
Oscar Wilde
Melvyn Bragg discusses Oscar Wilde, the Aesthetes and his literary legacy. Was Wilde a reactionary - the last of the romantics - or was he the midwife to modernism?
6 December 2001
Featuring: Valentine Cunningham, Regenia Gagnier, Neil Sammells
Samuel Beckett
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the author of Waiting for Godot, who lived in Paris and wrote in French as he found that more difficult than writing in English
17 January 2019
Featuring: Steven Connor, Laura Salisbury, Mark Nixon
Yeats and Irish Politics
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poet W.B. Yeats and Irish politics from the suspension of home rule to the division of Ireland.
17 April 2008
Featuring: Roy Foster, Fran Brearton, Warwick Gould
Yeats and Mysticism
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and beliefs of the Irish Poet W B Yeats and explores how a passion for magic and mysticism served and stood alongside his poetry.
31 January 2002
Featuring: Roy Foster, Warwick Gould, Brenda Maddox
17th-century English poets, 17th-century English dramatists and playwrights (5)
Aphra Behn
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Aphra Behn, known for her plays for the Restoration stage such as The Rover and for her novel Oroonoko.
12 October 2017
Featuring: Janet Todd, Ros Ballaster, Claire Bowditch
Milton
Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.
7 March 2002
Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden
Shakespeare and Literary Criticism
Melvyn Bragg discusses the enduring popular and academic appeal of Shakespeare and examines whether literary criticism and the academic institution ruins the pleasure of reading.
4 March 1999
Featuring: Harold Bloom, Jacqueline Rose
Shakespeare's Life
Melvyn Bragg discusses what we know about the life of William Shakespeare, a tantalising conundrum that has exercised minds since the day the playwright died.
15 March 2001
Featuring: Katherine Duncan-Jones, John Sutherland, Grace Ioppolo
Shakespeare's Work
Melvyn Bragg discusses whether the work of William Shakespeare is 'not of an age but for all time' or increasingly irrelevant museum pieces embalmed in out of reach language.
11 May 2000
Featuring: Frank Kermode, Michael Bogdanov, Germaine Greer
Elementary particles (4)
Higgs Boson
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Higgs Boson; the God particle, which explains how all mass behaves. It is a legend among physicists but does it exist?
18 November 2004
Featuring: Jim Al-Khalili, David Wark, Roger Cashmore
The Electron
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the discovery of this atomic particle in 1897 and what our growing knowledge of electrons has revealed about our world and may yet reveal.
29 September 2022
Featuring: Victoria Martin, Harry Cliff, Frank Close
The Neutrino
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the neutrino, a mysterious subatomic particle which is one of the most numerous, and least understood, objects in the universe.
14 April 2011
Featuring: Frank Close, Susan Cartwright, David Wark
The Photon
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the photon, the fundamental particle associated with light.
12 February 2015
Featuring: Frank Close, Wendy Flavell, Susan Cartwright
Allegory (4)
Animal Farm
4 Extra Debut. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss George Orwell's Animal Farm, which he struggled to publish in WW2 as the USSR was an ally. From 2016.
29 September 2016
Featuring: Steven Connor, Mary Vincent, Robert Colls
Moby Dick
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Moby-Dick (1851) by Herman Melville, the story of Ahab and the white whale, the most popular of around 1,000 ideas that listeners submitted.
7 December 2017
Featuring: Bridget Bennett, Katie McGettigan, Graham Thompson
Piers Plowman
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Langland's exploration of what it means to live a good life, written when the Black Death had overturned many of the old certainties.
29 October 2020
Featuring: Laura Ashe, Lawrence Warner, Alastair Bennett
Plato's Atlantis
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the legend of the lost island of Atlantis, first told by Plato and taken literally by Renaissance Europeans as they began to explore the oceans.
22 September 2022
Featuring: Edith Hall, Christopher Gill, Angie Hobbs
18th-century German philosophers (4)
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Heidelberg University alumni (4)
Hannah Arendt
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Hannah Arendt who examined totalitarianism and politics and, when covering the Eichmann trial, explored 'the banality of evil'.
2 February 2017
Featuring: Lyndsey Stonebridge, Frisbee Sheffield, Robert Eaglestone
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Jan Amos Komenský
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Czech man who tried to use education to build a better understanding between the peoples of Europe who were otherwise divided by religious wars.
19 May 2022
Featuring: Vladimir Urbanek, Suzanna Ivanic, Howard Hotson
Weber's The Protestant Ethic
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Max Weber's book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
27 March 2014
Featuring: Peter Ghosh, Sam Whimster, Linda Woodhead
18th-century French writers (4)
Emilie du Châtelet
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 18th-century mathematical genius whose insights into Newton and Leibniz were part of the great advance in science in the Enlightenment.
4 February 2021
Featuring: Patricia Fara, David Wootton, Judith Zinsser
Germaine de Staël
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas, works and life of Germaine de Stael (1766-1817), a literary critic, author, opponent of Napoleon and developer of Romanticism.
16 November 2017
Featuring: Catriona Seth, Alison Finch, Katherine Astbury
Lamarck and Natural Selection
Melvyn Bragg discusses Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, the 18th century French scientist, and his theory of Natural Selection. Who was he and how far did he pave the way for Darwin?
26 December 2003
Featuring: Sandy Knapp, Steve Jones, Simon Conway Morris
Olympe de Gouges
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, ideas and works of the Frenchwoman who wrote The Declaration of the Rights of Woman in 1791 during the French Revolution
21 April 2022
Featuring: Catriona Seth, Katherine Astbury, Sanja Perovic
Deist philosophers (4)
David Hume
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.
6 October 2011
Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris
Olympe de Gouges
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, ideas and works of the Frenchwoman who wrote The Declaration of the Rights of Woman in 1791 during the French Revolution
21 April 2022
Featuring: Catriona Seth, Katherine Astbury, Sanja Perovic
Rousseau on Education
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rousseau's ideas on how to educate children so they retain their natural selves and are not corrupted by society.
10 October 2019
Featuring: Richard Whatmore, Caroline Warman, Denis McManus
Thomas Paine's Common Sense
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.
21 January 2016
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson
Executed writers (4)
Cicero
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Cicero's political ideas on laws, duty, tyrants and the republic, which he developed as the Roman Republic was threatened by Caesar and civil wars.
25 January 2018
Featuring: Melissa Lane, Catherine Steel, Valentina Arena
Federico Garcia Lorca
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of Federico Garcia Lorca, author of Blood Wedding, Yerma and The House of Bernarda Alba, executed by Franco's forces, his body unrecovered.
4 July 2019
Featuring: Maria Delgado, Federico Bonaddio, Sarah Wright
Olympe de Gouges
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, ideas and works of the Frenchwoman who wrote The Declaration of the Rights of Woman in 1791 during the French Revolution
21 April 2022
Featuring: Catriona Seth, Katherine Astbury, Sanja Perovic
Seneca the Younger
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Seneca: philosopher, playwright, tutor to Nero, one of the first great writers born in the new Roman empire after the fall of the Republic.
23 February 2017
Featuring: Mary Beard, Catharine Edwards, Alessandro Schiesaro
French political philosophers (4)
Olympe de Gouges
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, ideas and works of the Frenchwoman who wrote The Declaration of the Rights of Woman in 1791 during the French Revolution
21 April 2022
Featuring: Catriona Seth, Katherine Astbury, Sanja Perovic
Simone Weil
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil. Admired by Albert Camus and Iris Murdoch, she achieved a great deal in her short life.
15 November 2012
Featuring: Beatrice Han-Pile, Stephen Plant, David Levy
Simone de Beauvoir
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.
22 October 2015
Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd
Tocqueville: Democracy in America
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alexis de Tocqueville and his study of the American democratic system, written as an example to France of how democracy might develop there.
22 March 2018
Featuring: Robert Gildea, Susan-Mary Grant, Jeremy Jennings
Women religious writers (4)
Hannah Arendt
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Hannah Arendt who examined totalitarianism and politics and, when covering the Eichmann trial, explored 'the banality of evil'.
2 February 2017
Featuring: Lyndsey Stonebridge, Frisbee Sheffield, Robert Eaglestone
Hildegard of Bingen
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the medieval mystic, composer and writer Hildegard of Bingen.
26 June 2014
Featuring: Miri Rubin, William Flynn, Almut Suerbaum
Margery Kempe and English Mysticism
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Margery Kempe (1373-1438), the English mystic who went to Jerusalem and dictated her life story, said to be the first autobiography in English.
2 June 2016
Featuring: Miri Rubin, Katherine Lewis, Anthony Bale
Olympe de Gouges
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, ideas and works of the Frenchwoman who wrote The Declaration of the Rights of Woman in 1791 during the French Revolution
21 April 2022
Featuring: Catriona Seth, Katherine Astbury, Sanja Perovic
19th-century English non-fiction writers (4)
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Dickens
Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?
12 July 2001
Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen
Polidori's The Vampyre
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the myths that gave rise to this novella from 1819 by Byron's physician, John Polidori, and the works such as Bram Stoker's Dracula it inspired.
07 April 2022
Featuring: Nick Groom, Samantha George, Martyn Rady
Rudyard Kipling
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Rudyard Kipling, a writer sometimes described as the poet of empire.
16 October 2014
Featuring: Howard Booth, Daniel Karlin, Jan Montefiore
Alumni of the University of Edinburgh (4)
Darwin: On the Origins of Charles Darwin
Melvyn Bragg presents a series about the life and work of Charles Darwin. Darwin's early life and time at Cambridge, where his interests shifted from religion to natural science.
5 January 2009
Featuring: Jim Moore, Steve Jones, David Norman, Colin Higgins
David Hume
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.
6 October 2011
Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris
Maxwell
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and work of the often overlooked 19th century Scottish scientist, and his enormous contribution to the creation of the technological age in which we live.
2 October 2003
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Peter Harman, Joanna Haigh
Polidori's The Vampyre
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the myths that gave rise to this novella from 1819 by Byron's physician, John Polidori, and the works such as Bram Stoker's Dracula it inspired.
07 April 2022
Featuring: Nick Groom, Samantha George, Martyn Rady
Writers of Gothic fiction (4)
Dickens
Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?
12 July 2001
Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen
Mary Wollstonecraft
Melvyn Bragg and guests John Mullan, Karen O'Brien and Barbara Taylor discuss the life and ideas of the pioneering British Enlightenment thinker Mary Wollstonecraft.
31 December 2009
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Mullan, Barbara Taylor
Oscar Wilde
Melvyn Bragg discusses Oscar Wilde, the Aesthetes and his literary legacy. Was Wilde a reactionary - the last of the romantics - or was he the midwife to modernism?
6 December 2001
Featuring: Valentine Cunningham, Regenia Gagnier, Neil Sammells
Polidori's The Vampyre
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the myths that gave rise to this novella from 1819 by Byron's physician, John Polidori, and the works such as Bram Stoker's Dracula it inspired.
07 April 2022
Featuring: Nick Groom, Samantha George, Martyn Rady
Historians of the French Revolution (4)
Edmund Burke
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke, whose views on revolution in America and France were hugely influential.
3 June 2010
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Richard Bourke, John Keane
Mary Wollstonecraft
Melvyn Bragg and guests John Mullan, Karen O'Brien and Barbara Taylor discuss the life and ideas of the pioneering British Enlightenment thinker Mary Wollstonecraft.
31 December 2009
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Mullan, Barbara Taylor
Peter Kropotkin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the Russian prince who became an anarchist and who argued that mutual aid was the key to evolution not survival of the fittest
24 February 2022
Featuring: Ruth Kinna, Lee Dugatkin, Simon Dixon
Tocqueville: Democracy in America
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alexis de Tocqueville and his study of the American democratic system, written as an example to France of how democracy might develop there.
22 March 2018
Featuring: Robert Gildea, Susan-Mary Grant, Jeremy Jennings
Libertarian socialists (4)
Camus
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Nobel Prize winning Algerian-French writer and existentialist philosopher Albert Camus.
3 January 2008
Featuring: Peter Dunwoodie, David Walker, Christina Howells
Peter Kropotkin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the Russian prince who became an anarchist and who argued that mutual aid was the key to evolution not survival of the fittest
24 February 2022
Featuring: Ruth Kinna, Lee Dugatkin, Simon Dixon
Sartre
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
7 October 2004
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells
William Morris
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss some of the many aspects of William Morris: his activism, poetry and prose and his ideas on arts, crafts and work in an industrial world.
5 July 2018
Featuring: Ingrid Hanson, Marcus Waithe, Jane Thomas
Humboldt University of Berlin alumni (4)
Bismarck
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the original Iron Chancellor, Otto Von Bismarck, one of 19th Century Europe’s most influential statesmen and the founder of modern Germany.
22 March 2007
Featuring: Richard J Evans, Christopher Clark, Katharine Lerman
Marx
Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.
14 July 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones
Walter Benjamin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable philosopher and critic whose ideas, developed in the 1930s, became highly influential after his death while escaping the Holocaust.
10 February 2022
Featuring: Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger
Weber's The Protestant Ethic
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Max Weber's book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
27 March 2014
Featuring: Peter Ghosh, Sam Whimster, Linda Woodhead
Marxist theorists (4)
Lenin
Melvyn Bragg investigates what drove the Soviet leader Lenin, and enabled him to develop a model to export communism and build an original political system that remained intact for over seventy years.
16 March 2000
Featuring: Robert Service, Vitali Vitaliev
Marx
Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.
14 July 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones
Rosa Luxemburg
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rosa Luxemburg, 'Red Rosa', a leading revolutionary and agitator in Poland and Germany until her arrest and murder in the Spartacus Revolt 1919.
13 April 2017
Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Mark Jones, Nadine Rossol
Walter Benjamin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable philosopher and critic whose ideas, developed in the 1930s, became highly influential after his death while escaping the Holocaust.
10 February 2022
Featuring: Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger
19th-century LGBT people (4)
Colette
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the novels and life of one of the most remarkable writers of the last century, whose Claudine series was first published under her husband's name.
27 January 2022
Featuring: Diana Holmes, Michèle Roberts, Belinda Jack
Humboldt
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Prussian naturalist and explorer, Alexander Von Humboldt. A hero in South America; Charles Darwin described him as ‘the greatest scientific traveller who ever lived’.
28 September 2006
Featuring: Jason Wilson, Patricia Fara, Jim Secord
Oscar Wilde
Melvyn Bragg discusses Oscar Wilde, the Aesthetes and his literary legacy. Was Wilde a reactionary - the last of the romantics - or was he the midwife to modernism?
6 December 2001
Featuring: Valentine Cunningham, Regenia Gagnier, Neil Sammells
Proust
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.
17 April 2003
Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser
French women novelists (4)
Colette
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the novels and life of one of the most remarkable writers of the last century, whose Claudine series was first published under her husband's name.
27 January 2022
Featuring: Diana Holmes, Michèle Roberts, Belinda Jack
George Sand
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work and life of Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin who in C19th France wrote many extremely successful novels, under the name George Sand
6 February 2020
Featuring: Belinda Jack, Angela Ryan, Nigel Harkness
Germaine de Staël
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas, works and life of Germaine de Stael (1766-1817), a literary critic, author, opponent of Napoleon and developer of Romanticism.
16 November 2017
Featuring: Catriona Seth, Alison Finch, Katherine Astbury
Simone de Beauvoir
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.
22 October 2015
Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd
Burials at Père Lachaise Cemetery (4)
Abelard and Heloise
Melvyn Bragg discusses the story of Abelard and Heloise, a medieval tale of literature and philosophy, love and scandal in the high Middle Ages.
5 May 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Henrietta Leyser, Michael Clanchy
Colette
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the novels and life of one of the most remarkable writers of the last century, whose Claudine series was first published under her husband's name.
27 January 2022
Featuring: Diana Holmes, Michèle Roberts, Belinda Jack
Oscar Wilde
Melvyn Bragg discusses Oscar Wilde, the Aesthetes and his literary legacy. Was Wilde a reactionary - the last of the romantics - or was he the midwife to modernism?
6 December 2001
Featuring: Valentine Cunningham, Regenia Gagnier, Neil Sammells
Proust
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.
17 April 2003
Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser
19th-century English novelists (4)
Dickens
Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?
12 July 2001
Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen
Elizabeth Gaskell's novel North and South
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, who set her 1855 novel in a version of Manchester she called Milton in the county of Darkshire.
9 March 2017
Featuring: Sally Shuttleworth, Dinah Birch, Jenny Uglow
Fanny Burney
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the 18th-century writer Fanny Burney, also known as Frances D'Arblay and Frances Burney, best known for her novel Evelina.
23 April 2015
Featuring: Nicole Pohl, Judith Hawley, John Mullan
Thomas Hardy's Poetry
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hardy's poems, which he prized far above the novels which made him famous and rich, and his ambition to be ranked alongside Shelley and Byron.
13 January 2022
Featuring: Mark Ford, Jane Thomas, Tim Armstrong
Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature (4)
Rudyard Kipling
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Rudyard Kipling, a writer sometimes described as the poet of empire.
16 October 2014
Featuring: Howard Booth, Daniel Karlin, Jan Montefiore
Thomas Hardy's Poetry
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hardy's poems, which he prized far above the novels which made him famous and rich, and his ambition to be ranked alongside Shelley and Byron.
13 January 2022
Featuring: Mark Ford, Jane Thomas, Tim Armstrong
Yeats and Irish Politics
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poet W.B. Yeats and Irish politics from the suspension of home rule to the division of Ireland.
17 April 2008
Featuring: Roy Foster, Fran Brearton, Warwick Gould
Yeats and Mysticism
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and beliefs of the Irish Poet W B Yeats and explores how a passion for magic and mysticism served and stood alongside his poetry.
31 January 2002
Featuring: Roy Foster, Warwick Gould, Brenda Maddox
British novellas (4)
A Christmas Carol
From Bah Humbug to God Bless Us Every One: Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Charles Dickens' story of Scrooge's salvation by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet To Come.
16 December 2021
Featuring: Juliet John, Jon Mee, Dinah Birch
Animal Farm
4 Extra Debut. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss George Orwell's Animal Farm, which he struggled to publish in WW2 as the USSR was an ally. From 2016.
29 September 2016
Featuring: Steven Connor, Mary Vincent, Robert Colls
Heart of Darkness
Melvyn Bragg discusses Joseph Conrad's Novel, Heart of Darkness, a critique of colonialism at the turn of the century
15 February 2007
Featuring: Susan Jones, Robert Hampson, Laurence Davies
The Time Machine
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and anxieties in late Victorian London, explored by HG Wells in his story of time travel, evolution and a planet unfit for humans.
17 October 2019
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Amanda Rees, Simon James
5th-century BC Greek people (4)
Heraclitus
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the ancient Greek thinker Heraclitus, immortalised by later scholars as the Weeping Philosopher.
8 December 2011
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Peter Adamson, James Warren
Herodotus
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Greek writer whose Histories aimed to 'preserve the great and marvellous deeds of Greeks and barbarians, especially why they fought each other'.
23 September 2021
Featuring: Tom Harrison, Esther Eidinow, Paul Cartledge
Plato's Gorgias
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock
25 November 2021
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh
Pythagoras
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and influence of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans.
10 December 2009
Featuring: Ian Stewart, Serafina Cuomo, John O'Connor
Critical thinking (4)
Perception and the Senses
Melvyn Bragg discusses perception: how the brain reacts to the mass of data continually crowding it and examines what governs our perception of the world.
28 April 2005
Featuring: Richard Gregory, David Moore, Gemma Calvert
Plato's Gorgias
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock
25 November 2021
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh
Socrates
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.
27 September 2007
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett
The Enlightenment in Britain
Melvyn Bragg examines the part British thinkers played in the Enlightenment in the 18th century, and examines whether the shifts of thought in those years provided the platform for the modern world.
18 January 2001
Featuring: Roy Porter, Linda Colley, Jeremy Black
18th-century classical composers (4)
Frederick the Great
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Frederick II, king of Prussia from 1740 to 1786.
2 July 2015
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Katrin Kohl, Thomas Biskup
Ludwig van Beethoven
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rise of Beethoven, from Bonn to Vienna, where he became one of the great composers, despite his growing deafness.
21 December 2017
Featuring: Laura Tunbridge, John Deathridge, Erica Buurman
Rousseau on Education
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rousseau's ideas on how to educate children so they retain their natural selves and are not corrupted by society.
10 October 2019
Featuring: Richard Whatmore, Caroline Warman, Denis McManus
William and Caroline Herschel
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pioneering brother and sister who, between them, discovered Uranus, comets, double stars and infrared light at the end of the 18th century.
11 November 2021
Featuring: Monica Grady, Carolin Crawford, Jim Bennett
19th-century German male musicians (4)
Ludwig van Beethoven
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rise of Beethoven, from Bonn to Vienna, where he became one of the great composers, despite his growing deafness.
21 December 2017
Featuring: Laura Tunbridge, John Deathridge, Erica Buurman
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.
12 January 2017
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson
Wagner
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life, and legacy of the German composer Richard Wagner, mentor of Nietzsche and disciple of Schopenhauer, who changed the face of 19th century opera.
20 June 2002
Featuring: John Deathridge, Lucy Beckett, Michael Tanner
William and Caroline Herschel
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pioneering brother and sister who, between them, discovered Uranus, comets, double stars and infrared light at the end of the 18th century.
11 November 2021
Featuring: Monica Grady, Carolin Crawford, Jim Bennett
German male classical composers (4)
Frederick the Great
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Frederick II, king of Prussia from 1740 to 1786.
2 July 2015
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Katrin Kohl, Thomas Biskup
Ludwig van Beethoven
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rise of Beethoven, from Bonn to Vienna, where he became one of the great composers, despite his growing deafness.
21 December 2017
Featuring: Laura Tunbridge, John Deathridge, Erica Buurman
Wagner
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life, and legacy of the German composer Richard Wagner, mentor of Nietzsche and disciple of Schopenhauer, who changed the face of 19th century opera.
20 June 2002
Featuring: John Deathridge, Lucy Beckett, Michael Tanner
William and Caroline Herschel
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pioneering brother and sister who, between them, discovered Uranus, comets, double stars and infrared light at the end of the 18th century.
11 November 2021
Featuring: Monica Grady, Carolin Crawford, Jim Bennett
20th-century English philosophers (4)
Alan Turing
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and life of the founder of computer science - whose work helped crack enemy codes in WW2 - and his exploration of artificial intelligence.
15 October 2020
Featuring: Leslie Ann Goldberg, Simon Schaffer, Andrew Hodges
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aldous Huxley's dystopian 1932 novel Brave New World and its vision of a future of test tube babies, free love and round-the-clock surveillance.
9 April 2009
Featuring: David Bradshaw, Daniel Pick, Michèle Barrett
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Iris Murdoch
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the growing prominence of the philosophy of one of the most celebrated novelists of the 20th century, who developed her ideas in response to WWII.
21 October 2021
Featuring: Anil Gomes, Anne Rowe, Miles Leeson
British ethicists (4)
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Iris Murdoch
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the growing prominence of the philosophy of one of the most celebrated novelists of the 20th century, who developed her ideas in response to WWII.
21 October 2021
Featuring: Anil Gomes, Anne Rowe, Miles Leeson
Mill
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.
18 May 2006
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan
Popper
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.
8 February 2007
Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright
English women non-fiction writers (4)
Iris Murdoch
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the growing prominence of the philosophy of one of the most celebrated novelists of the 20th century, who developed her ideas in response to WWII.
21 October 2021
Featuring: Anil Gomes, Anne Rowe, Miles Leeson
Margery Kempe and English Mysticism
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Margery Kempe (1373-1438), the English mystic who went to Jerusalem and dictated her life story, said to be the first autobiography in English.
2 June 2016
Featuring: Miri Rubin, Katherine Lewis, Anthony Bale
Mary Astell
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosopher Mary Astell (1666 – 1731) who has been described as "the first English feminist".
5 November 2020
Featuring: Hannah Dawson, Mark Goldie, Teresa Bejan
Octavia Hill
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Victorian reformer Octavia Hill, pioneer of social housing and campaigner for public open spaces.
7 April 2011
Featuring: Dinah Birch, Lawrence Goldman, Gillian Darley
Virtue ethicists (4)
David Hume
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.
6 October 2011
Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris
Edmund Burke
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke, whose views on revolution in America and France were hugely influential.
3 June 2010
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Richard Bourke, John Keane
Iris Murdoch
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the growing prominence of the philosophy of one of the most celebrated novelists of the 20th century, who developed her ideas in response to WWII.
21 October 2021
Featuring: Anil Gomes, Anne Rowe, Miles Leeson
St Thomas Aquinas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss St Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic Church's foremost western philosopher and theologian.
17 September 2009
Featuring: Martin Palmer, John Haldane, Annabel Brett
Adultery in novels (4)
Great Gatsby
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the great American novels of the 20th Century, where inexplicably rich Jay Gatsby aims to win Daisy Buchanan from her millionaire husband.
14 January 2021
Featuring: Sarah Churchwell, Philip McGowan, William Blazek
James Joyce's Ulysses
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss James Joyce's celebrated novel Ulysses.
14 June 2012
Featuring: Steven Connor, Jeri Johnson, Richard Brown
Madame Bovary
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the literary sensation caused by the trial for indecency of Gustave Flaubert's novel Madame Bovary.
12 July 2007
Featuring: Andy Martin, Mary Orr, Robert Gildea
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Anne Bronte's story of the mysterious Helen Graham who seeks a new independent life as an artist after escaping her abusive, alcoholic husband.
30 September 2021
Featuring: Alexandra Lewis, Marianne Thormählen, John Bowen
18th-century English male writers (4)
Edward Gibbon
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the writer of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, one of the most celebrated works of its kind.
17 June 2021
Featuring: David Womersley, Charlotte Roberts, Karen O’Brien
Johnson
Melvyn Bragg discusses Samuel Johnson, a giant of 18th century literature, language and letters, and perhaps the most quotable Englishman to have ever lifted a pen.
27 October 2005
Featuring: John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Judith Hawley
Pope
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the satirist Alexander Pope. One of the greatest poets of the English language, his brilliant satires have made him popular in our age but not in his own.
9 November 2006
Featuring: John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Valerie Rumbold
Thomas Paine's Common Sense
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.
21 January 2016
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson
English philanthropists (4)
Booth's Life and Labour Survey
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Charles Booth's ambitious project to discover how many people in late Victorian London were living in poverty, and understand why
10 June 2021
Featuring: Emma Griffin, Sarah Wise, Lawrence Goldman
Dickens
Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?
12 July 2001
Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen
Octavia Hill
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Victorian reformer Octavia Hill, pioneer of social housing and campaigner for public open spaces.
7 April 2011
Featuring: Dinah Birch, Lawrence Goldman, Gillian Darley
Wilberforce
In an unusual edition of In Our Time, marking the 1807 Abolition of the Slave Trade, Melvyn Bragg leaves the studio to examine the life of William Wilberforce.
22 February 2007
Featuring
Members of the Prussian Academy of Sciences (4)
Catherine the Great
Melvyn Bragg discusses Catherine the Great who set out to transform Russia from a semi-barbaric country into a model of the ideals of the 18th century French Enlightenment.
23 February 2006
Featuring: Janet Hartley, Simon Dixon, Tony Lentin
Humboldt
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Prussian naturalist and explorer, Alexander Von Humboldt. A hero in South America; Charles Darwin described him as ‘the greatest scientific traveller who ever lived’.
28 September 2006
Featuring: Jason Wilson, Patricia Fara, Jim Secord
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Montesquieu
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of the French political philosopher (1689-1755) whose work on liberty and republicanism, banned at home, influenced the US constitution.
14 June 2018
Featuring: Richard Bourke, Rachel Hammersley, Richard Whatmore
Historical eras (4)
The Dawn of the Iron Age
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the dawn of the European Iron Age, a period of great upheaval when technology and societies were changed forever.
24 March 2011
Featuring: Barry Cunliffe, Sue Hamilton, Timothy Champion
The Enlightenment in Britain
Melvyn Bragg examines the part British thinkers played in the Enlightenment in the 18th century, and examines whether the shifts of thought in those years provided the platform for the modern world.
18 January 2001
Featuring: Roy Porter, Linda Colley, Jeremy Black
The Interregnum
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the unstable rule in England between the execution of Charles I and restoration of Charles II and the impact in Scotland and, infamously, Ireland
27 May 2021
Featuring: Clare Jackson, Micheál Ó Siochrú, Laura Stewart
The Renaissance
Melvyn Bragg explores the veracity of modern claims about the Renaissance and whether our current perceptions about its role in cultural history stem from a 19th century historian.
8 June 2000
Featuring: Francis Ames-Lewis, Peter Burke, Evelyn Welch
Pigs in literature (4)
Animal Farm
4 Extra Debut. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss George Orwell's Animal Farm, which he struggled to publish in WW2 as the USSR was an ally. From 2016.
29 September 2016
Featuring: Steven Connor, Mary Vincent, Robert Colls
Journey to the West
Melvyn Bragg discusses the much loved Chinese novel from 1592, featuring Monkey, Tripitaka, Sandy and Pigsy, as they travel to India to bring back Buddhist texts.
20 May 2021
Featuring: Julia Lovell, Chiung-yun Evelyn Liu, Craig Clunas
The Mabinogion
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Welsh stories of Arthurian romance and Celtic mythology created in the oral tradition for centuries before being written down in the Middle Ages.
10 May 2018
Featuring: Sioned Davies, Helen Fulton, Juliette Wood
The Odyssey
Melvyn Bragg discusses Homer’s Odyssey, the epic story of the Greek hero Odysseus’ journey back from Troy, and its foundational position in the history of western literature and ideas.
9 September 2004
Featuring: Simon Goldhill, Edith Hall, Oliver Taplin
1st-century BC Romans (4)
Catullus
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poetry of Catullus - some of the greatest verse of his time, and some of the most scurrilous - and his influence on Roman and later poetry
11 January 2020
Featuring: Gail Trimble, Simon Smith, Maria Wyke
Horace
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Horace, one of the greatest poets of his age, the origin of phrases such as carpe diem, nil desperandum and dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.
15 November 2018
Featuring: Emily Gowers, William Fitzgerald, Ellen O'Gorman
Ovid
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Roman poet whose influence is arguably greater than any poet of the classical age, besides Homer, even though his writing led to his exile.
29 April 2021
Featuring: Maria Wyke, Gail Trimble, Dunstan Lowe
Spartacus
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life of Spartacus, a Roman gladiator who was involved in a series of slave uprisings against the Roman Republic in the 1st century BC.
6 March 2014
Featuring: Mary Beard, Maria Wyke, Theresa Urbainczyk
1st-century writers (4)
Josephus
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Flavius Josephus, author of The Jewish War.
21 May 2015
Featuring: Tessa Rajak, Philip Alexander, Martin Goodman
Ovid
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Roman poet whose influence is arguably greater than any poet of the classical age, besides Homer, even though his writing led to his exile.
29 April 2021
Featuring: Maria Wyke, Gail Trimble, Dunstan Lowe
Seneca the Younger
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Seneca: philosopher, playwright, tutor to Nero, one of the first great writers born in the new Roman empire after the fall of the Republic.
23 February 2017
Featuring: Mary Beard, Catharine Edwards, Alessandro Schiesaro
St Paul
Melvyn Bragg and guests Helen Bond, John Haldane and John Barclay discuss the influence of St Paul on the early Christian church and on Christian theology generally.
28 May 2009
Featuring: John Haldane, John Barclay, Helen Bond
Fluid dynamicists (4)
Archimedes
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Greek mathematician Archimedes, brilliant with numbers and unexpectedly good at defensive siege warfare.
25 January 2007
Featuring: Jackie Stedall, Serafina Cuomo, George Phillips
Blaise Pascal
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the French polymath Blaise Pascal.
19 September 2013
Featuring: David Wootton, Michael Moriarty, Michela Massimi
Pierre-Simon Laplace
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great French mathematician who tackled questions on the stability of the Solar System and planet rotation and devised the basis for metrication
8 April 2021
Featuring: Marcus du Sautoy, Timothy Gowers, Colva Roney-Dougal
Robert Boyle
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Robert Boyle, a pioneering scientist and one of the first Fellows of the Royal Society.
12 June 2014
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Michael Hunter, Anna Marie Roos
19th-century English writers (4)
Darwin: On the Origins of Charles Darwin
Melvyn Bragg presents a series about the life and work of Charles Darwin. Darwin's early life and time at Cambridge, where his interests shifted from religion to natural science.
5 January 2009
Featuring: Jim Moore, Steve Jones, David Norman, Colin Higgins
David Ricardo
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Ricardo's argument that Britain's economy was being held back by the interests of landlords and protectionism, and his call for free trade.
25 March 2021
Featuring: Matthew Watson, Helen Paul, Richard Whatmore
Mill
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.
18 May 2006
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan
Thomas Paine's Common Sense
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.
21 January 2016
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson
British classical liberals (4)
David Ricardo
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Ricardo's argument that Britain's economy was being held back by the interests of landlords and protectionism, and his call for free trade.
25 March 2021
Featuring: Matthew Watson, Helen Paul, Richard Whatmore
Harriet Martineau
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Harriet Martineau who wrote extensively in the C19th on a wide range of subjects including abolition, and is called the mother of sociology.
8 December 2016
Featuring: Valerie Sanders, Karen O'Brien, Ella Dzelzainis
Mill
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.
18 May 2006
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan
Thomas Paine's Common Sense
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.
21 January 2016
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson
English Unitarians (4)
David Ricardo
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Ricardo's argument that Britain's economy was being held back by the interests of landlords and protectionism, and his call for free trade.
25 March 2021
Featuring: Matthew Watson, Helen Paul, Richard Whatmore
Elizabeth Gaskell's novel North and South
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, who set her 1855 novel in a version of Manchester she called Milton in the county of Darkshire.
9 March 2017
Featuring: Sally Shuttleworth, Dinah Birch, Jenny Uglow
Harriet Martineau
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Harriet Martineau who wrote extensively in the C19th on a wide range of subjects including abolition, and is called the mother of sociology.
8 December 2016
Featuring: Valerie Sanders, Karen O'Brien, Ella Dzelzainis
Mary Wollstonecraft
Melvyn Bragg and guests John Mullan, Karen O'Brien and Barbara Taylor discuss the life and ideas of the pioneering British Enlightenment thinker Mary Wollstonecraft.
31 December 2009
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Mullan, Barbara Taylor
Utilitarians (4)
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Darwin: On the Origins of Charles Darwin
Melvyn Bragg presents a series about the life and work of Charles Darwin. Darwin's early life and time at Cambridge, where his interests shifted from religion to natural science.
5 January 2009
Featuring: Jim Moore, Steve Jones, David Norman, Colin Higgins
David Ricardo
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Ricardo's argument that Britain's economy was being held back by the interests of landlords and protectionism, and his call for free trade.
25 March 2021
Featuring: Matthew Watson, Helen Paul, Richard Whatmore
Mill
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.
18 May 2006
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan
History of climate variability and change (4)
Climate change
Melvyn Bragg examines predictions and solutions for climate change and discusses whether the effects of global warming are already upon us, and if so, how we can really hope to stop them.
6 January 2000
Featuring: John Houghton, George Monbiot
Ice ages
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss ice ages, periods when the temperature of the Earth has dropped to low levels.
14 February 2013
Featuring: Jane Francis, Richard Corfield, Carrie Lear
The Late Devonian Extinction
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the disappearance of up to 70 per cent of species roughly 370 million years ago at the end of The Age of Fishes, and the range of possible causes.
11 March 2021
Featuring: Jessica Whiteside, David Bond, Mike Benton
The Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the causes and effects of the highest global temperatures in the last 65m years, when Arctic sea surfaces reached up to 23 C for c100,000 years.
16 March 2017
Featuring: Dame Jane Francis, Mark Maslin, Tracy Aze
Narrative poems (4)
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, the poem that made Byron famous.
6 January 2011
Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Jane Stabler, Emily Bernhard Jackson
Piers Plowman
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Langland's exploration of what it means to live a good life, written when the Black Death had overturned many of the old certainties.
29 October 2020
Featuring: Laura Ashe, Lawrence Warner, Alastair Bennett
The Epic
Melvyn Bragg discusses the history of the epic form, from it's creation by Homer to its more modern incarnations in the hands of James Joyce, J R R Tolkien and Philip Pullman.
6 February 2003
Featuring: John Carey, Karen Edwards, Oliver Taplin
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Coleridge's poem of a grim voyage in which a sailor shoots an albatross and is forced to tell the story of his crime forever.
4 March 2021
Featuring: Sir Jonathan Bate, Tom Mole, Rosemary Ashton
Ancient Roman adoptees (4)
Marcus Aurelius
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, meditations and reputation of this stoic and philosopher king, who Machiavelli called the last of the 'Five Good Emperors'.
25 February 2021
Featuring: Simon Goldhill, Angie Hobbs, Catharine Edwards
Nero
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the reputation of Nero, popular with his subjects but vilified in his lifetime and after and associated with the Beast in the Book of Revelation.
25 April 2019
Featuring: Maria Wyke, Matthew Nicholls, Shushma Malik
Pliny the Younger
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Roman lawyer and statesman Pliny the Younger, whose letters offer a fascinating insight into his life and the ancient world.
12 December 2013
Featuring: Catharine Edwards, Roy Gibson, Alice König
The Augustan Age
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the political regime and cultural influence of the Roman Emperor Augustus.
11 June 2009
Featuring: Mary Beard, Catharine Edwards, Duncan Kennedy
Philosophers of Roman Italy (4)
Cicero
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Cicero's political ideas on laws, duty, tyrants and the republic, which he developed as the Roman Republic was threatened by Caesar and civil wars.
25 January 2018
Featuring: Melissa Lane, Catherine Steel, Valentina Arena
Marcus Aurelius
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, meditations and reputation of this stoic and philosopher king, who Machiavelli called the last of the 'Five Good Emperors'.
25 February 2021
Featuring: Simon Goldhill, Angie Hobbs, Catharine Edwards
Pliny's Natural History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Pliny the Elder's Natural History, a comprehensive and influential encyclopedia of the natural sciences written in the first century AD.
8 July 2010
Featuring: Serafina Cuomo, Aude Doody, Liba Taub
Seneca the Younger
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Seneca: philosopher, playwright, tutor to Nero, one of the first great writers born in the new Roman empire after the fall of the Republic.
23 February 2017
Featuring: Mary Beard, Catharine Edwards, Alessandro Schiesaro
Modernist novels (4)
Great Gatsby
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the great American novels of the 20th Century, where inexplicably rich Jay Gatsby aims to win Daisy Buchanan from her millionaire husband.
14 January 2021
Featuring: Sarah Churchwell, Philip McGowan, William Blazek
Heart of Darkness
Melvyn Bragg discusses Joseph Conrad's Novel, Heart of Darkness, a critique of colonialism at the turn of the century
15 February 2007
Featuring: Susan Jones, Robert Hampson, Laurence Davies
James Joyce's Ulysses
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss James Joyce's celebrated novel Ulysses.
14 June 2012
Featuring: Steven Connor, Jeri Johnson, Richard Brown
Mrs Dalloway
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs Dalloway, published in 1925.
3 July 2014
Featuring: Hermione Lee, Jane Goldman, Kathryn Simpson
Christian radicals (4)
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Bonhoeffer's ideas about Christian ethics, the role of the Church in a secular world, and his attempts to overthrow Hitler.
27 September 2018
Featuring: Stephen Plant, Eleanor McLaughlin, Tom Greggs
George Fox and the Quakers
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the foundation of the Religious Society of Friends, otherwise known as the Quakers, in the 17th century.
5 April 2012
Featuring: Justin Champion, John Coffey, Kate Peters
John Wesley and Methodism
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the difference John Wesley made during the Christian Revival of the 18th Century, developing Methodism into a major movement around the world
10 December 2020
Featuring: Stephen Plant, Eryn White, William Gibson
John Wycliff and the Lollards
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the medieval philosopher and theologian John Wyclif and his followers, the Lollards.
16 June 2011
Featuring: Anthony Kenny, Anne Hudson, Rob Lutton
English evangelicals (4)
George Fox and the Quakers
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the foundation of the Religious Society of Friends, otherwise known as the Quakers, in the 17th century.
5 April 2012
Featuring: Justin Champion, John Coffey, Kate Peters
John Wesley and Methodism
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the difference John Wesley made during the Christian Revival of the 18th Century, developing Methodism into a major movement around the world
10 December 2020
Featuring: Stephen Plant, Eryn White, William Gibson
John Wycliff and the Lollards
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the medieval philosopher and theologian John Wyclif and his followers, the Lollards.
16 June 2011
Featuring: Anthony Kenny, Anne Hudson, Rob Lutton
Wilberforce
In an unusual edition of In Our Time, marking the 1807 Abolition of the Slave Trade, Melvyn Bragg leaves the studio to examine the life of William Wilberforce.
22 February 2007
Featuring
English abolitionists (4)
Darwin: On the Origins of Charles Darwin
Melvyn Bragg presents a series about the life and work of Charles Darwin. Darwin's early life and time at Cambridge, where his interests shifted from religion to natural science.
5 January 2009
Featuring: Jim Moore, Steve Jones, David Norman, Colin Higgins
Harriet Martineau
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Harriet Martineau who wrote extensively in the C19th on a wide range of subjects including abolition, and is called the mother of sociology.
8 December 2016
Featuring: Valerie Sanders, Karen O'Brien, Ella Dzelzainis
John Wesley and Methodism
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the difference John Wesley made during the Christian Revival of the 18th Century, developing Methodism into a major movement around the world
10 December 2020
Featuring: Stephen Plant, Eryn White, William Gibson
Wilberforce
In an unusual edition of In Our Time, marking the 1807 Abolition of the Slave Trade, Melvyn Bragg leaves the studio to examine the life of William Wilberforce.
22 February 2007
Featuring
Modernist poets (4)
Auden
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss WH Auden's life and poetry from Europe before WWII, reflecting on his travels to Spain, China and Germany and the rise of totalitarianism.
19 December 2019
Featuring: Mark Ford, Janet Montefiore, Jeremy Noel-Tod
Fernando Pessoa
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the works and life of one of Portugal's greatest poets, who wrote in his own name and in those of several rounded characters he created.
3 December 2020
Featuring: Cláudia Pazos-Alonso, Juliet Perkins, Paulo de Medeiros
Yeats and Irish Politics
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poet W.B. Yeats and Irish politics from the suspension of home rule to the division of Ireland.
17 April 2008
Featuring: Roy Foster, Fran Brearton, Warwick Gould
Yeats and Mysticism
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and beliefs of the Irish Poet W B Yeats and explores how a passion for magic and mysticism served and stood alongside his poetry.
31 January 2002
Featuring: Roy Foster, Warwick Gould, Brenda Maddox
18th-century English writers (4)
Fanny Burney
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the 18th-century writer Fanny Burney, also known as Frances D'Arblay and Frances Burney, best known for her novel Evelina.
23 April 2015
Featuring: Nicole Pohl, Judith Hawley, John Mullan
Johnson
Melvyn Bragg discusses Samuel Johnson, a giant of 18th century literature, language and letters, and perhaps the most quotable Englishman to have ever lifted a pen.
27 October 2005
Featuring: John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Judith Hawley
Mary Astell
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosopher Mary Astell (1666 – 1731) who has been described as "the first English feminist".
5 November 2020
Featuring: Hannah Dawson, Mark Goldie, Teresa Bejan
Thomas Paine's Common Sense
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.
21 January 2016
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson
English inventors (4)
Alan Turing
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and life of the founder of computer science - whose work helped crack enemy codes in WW2 - and his exploration of artificial intelligence.
15 October 2020
Featuring: Leslie Ann Goldberg, Simon Schaffer, Andrew Hodges
Michael Faraday
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Michael Faraday, the most famous British scientist of the 19th century.
25 December 2015
Featuring: Geoffrey Cantor, Laura Herz, Frank James
Robert Hooke
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Robert Hooke, the 17th-century scientist with a wide variety of interests from elasticity to microscopes who fell out with Newton.
18 February 2016
Featuring: David Wootton, Patricia Fara, Rob Iliffe
Thomas Paine's Common Sense
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.
21 January 2016
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson
Alumni of St John's College, Cambridge (4)
Paul Dirac
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Bristolian theoretical physicist, ranked alongside Einstein by his peers, who won a Nobel for his work on quantum mechanics.
5 March 2020
Featuring: Graham Farmelo, Valerie Gibson, David Berman
Titus Oates and his Popish Plot
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Titus Oates and his role in starting and spreading rumours of a 'Popish Plot' against Charles II.
12 May 2016
Featuring: Clare Jackson, Mark Knights, Peter Hinds
Wilberforce
In an unusual edition of In Our Time, marking the 1807 Abolition of the Slave Trade, Melvyn Bragg leaves the studio to examine the life of William Wilberforce.
22 February 2007
Featuring
William Cecil
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and influence of the 1st Baron Burghley, Elizabeth I's powerful Secretary of State who advanced England's interests throughout her reign
7 March 2019
Featuring: Diarmaid MacCulloch, Susan Doran, John Guy
19th-century pseudonymous writers (4)
Dickens
Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?
12 July 2001
Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen
George Sand
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work and life of Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin who in C19th France wrote many extremely successful novels, under the name George Sand
6 February 2020
Featuring: Belinda Jack, Angela Ryan, Nigel Harkness
Kierkegaard
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.
20 March 2008
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt
Lenin
Melvyn Bragg investigates what drove the Soviet leader Lenin, and enabled him to develop a model to export communism and build an original political system that remained intact for over seventy years.
16 March 2000
Featuring: Robert Service, Vitali Vitaliev
Medieval Latin poets (4)
Abelard and Heloise
Melvyn Bragg discusses the story of Abelard and Heloise, a medieval tale of literature and philosophy, love and scandal in the high Middle Ages.
5 May 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Henrietta Leyser, Michael Clanchy
Alcuin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the cleric, educator and poet from York who put learning for its own sake at the heart of the Carolingian Renaissance
30 January 2020
Featuring: Joanna Story, Andy Orchard, Mary Garrison
Hildegard of Bingen
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the medieval mystic, composer and writer Hildegard of Bingen.
26 June 2014
Featuring: Miri Rubin, William Flynn, Almut Suerbaum
St Thomas Aquinas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss St Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic Church's foremost western philosopher and theologian.
17 September 2009
Featuring: Martin Palmer, John Haldane, Annabel Brett
Scholastic philosophers (4)
Abelard and Heloise
Melvyn Bragg discusses the story of Abelard and Heloise, a medieval tale of literature and philosophy, love and scandal in the high Middle Ages.
5 May 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Henrietta Leyser, Michael Clanchy
Alcuin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the cleric, educator and poet from York who put learning for its own sake at the heart of the Carolingian Renaissance
30 January 2020
Featuring: Joanna Story, Andy Orchard, Mary Garrison
Roger Bacon
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss medieval English scholar Roger Bacon, an early pioneer of science who became known as Doctor Mirabilis.
20 April 2017
Featuring: Jack Cunningham, Amanda Power, Elly Truitt
St Thomas Aquinas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss St Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic Church's foremost western philosopher and theologian.
17 September 2009
Featuring: Martin Palmer, John Haldane, Annabel Brett
Anglican poets (4)
Auden
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss WH Auden's life and poetry from Europe before WWII, reflecting on his travels to Spain, China and Germany and the rise of totalitarianism.
19 December 2019
Featuring: Mark Ford, Janet Montefiore, Jeremy Noel-Tod
Milton
Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.
7 March 2002
Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden
Yeats and Irish Politics
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poet W.B. Yeats and Irish politics from the suspension of home rule to the division of Ireland.
17 April 2008
Featuring: Roy Foster, Fran Brearton, Warwick Gould
Yeats and Mysticism
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and beliefs of the Irish Poet W B Yeats and explores how a passion for magic and mysticism served and stood alongside his poetry.
31 January 2002
Featuring: Roy Foster, Warwick Gould, Brenda Maddox
Anthologists (4)
Auden
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss WH Auden's life and poetry from Europe before WWII, reflecting on his travels to Spain, China and Germany and the rise of totalitarianism.
19 December 2019
Featuring: Mark Ford, Janet Montefiore, Jeremy Noel-Tod
Jorge Luis Borges
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges.
4 January 2007
Featuring: Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn
Yeats and Irish Politics
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poet W.B. Yeats and Irish politics from the suspension of home rule to the division of Ireland.
17 April 2008
Featuring: Roy Foster, Fran Brearton, Warwick Gould
Yeats and Mysticism
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and beliefs of the Irish Poet W B Yeats and explores how a passion for magic and mysticism served and stood alongside his poetry.
31 January 2002
Featuring: Roy Foster, Warwick Gould, Brenda Maddox
20th-century British writers (4)
Alfred Russel Wallace
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Victorian pioneer of evolutionary theory Alfred Russel Wallace.
21 March 2013
Featuring: Steve Jones, George Beccaloni, Ted Benton
Lawrence of Arabia
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Lawrence of Arabia, the legend and its context, an idea drawn from over 1200 suggested by listeners this autumn
5 December 2019
Featuring: Hussein Omar, Catriona Pennell, Neil Faulkner
Popper
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.
8 February 2007
Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright
Wittgenstein
Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.
4 December 2003
Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn
Romantic poets (4)
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
John Clare
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss John Clare, the 'Northamptonshire peasant poet', whose writing was as celebrated as his life was humble.
9 February 2017
Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Mina Gorji, Simon Kövesi
Robert Burns
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Ayrshire farmer whose 'Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect' (1786) set him on the way to a worldwide reputation as one of the great poets.
24 October 2019
Featuring: Robert Crawford, Fiona Stafford, Murray Pittock
American people of English descent (4)
Benjamin Franklin
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.
1 March 2012
Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara
President Ulysses S Grant
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Grant's role in rebuilding America in the decade after the Civil War and his impact on African-Americans and Native Americans.
30 May 2019
Featuring: Erik Mathisen, Susan-Mary Grant, Robert Cook
Thomas Edison
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of Thomas Edison, one of the great inventors and cultural figures of modern America.
9 December 2010
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Kathleen Burk, Iwan Morus
Washington and the American Revolution
Melvyn Bragg discusses the first President of the United States, George Washington, and the people and ideas that saw the American Revolution overthrow British rule in 1775.
24 June 2004
Featuring: Carol Berkin, Simon Middleton, Colin Bonwick
Frame stories (4)
Frankenstein
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Mary Shelley's story of Victor Frankenstein and the creature he makes from cadavers and then rejects - only for the monster to take his revenge
16 May 2019
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Michael Rossington, Jane Thomas
Heart of Darkness
Melvyn Bragg discusses Joseph Conrad's Novel, Heart of Darkness, a critique of colonialism at the turn of the century
15 February 2007
Featuring: Susan Jones, Robert Hampson, Laurence Davies
The Arabian Nights
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Arabian Nights - an ever shifting sea of stories across Asia and Europe.
18 October 2007
Featuring: Robert Graham Irwin, Marina Warner, Gerard van Gelder
Wuthering Heights
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Emily Bronte's story of Heathcliff and Cathy, of love, hatred, revenge and self-destruction across two generations in a remote moorland home.
28 September 2017
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Bowen, Alexandra Lewis
20th-century French non-fiction writers (4)
Bergson and Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.
9 May 2019
Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
23 May 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene
Proust
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.
17 April 2003
Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser
Simone de Beauvoir
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.
22 October 2015
Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd
École Normale Supérieure alumni (4)
Bergson and Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.
9 May 2019
Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair
Louis Pasteur
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Louis Pasteur, microbiologist, developer of vaccines, saviour of the French beer and wine industries and preserver of milk.
18 May 2017
Featuring: Andrew Mendelsohn, Anne Hardy, Michael Worboys
Sartre
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
7 October 2004
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells
Simone Weil
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil. Admired by Albert Camus and Iris Murdoch, she achieved a great deal in her short life.
15 November 2012
Featuring: Beatrice Han-Pile, Stephen Plant, David Levy
French ethicists (4)
Bergson and Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.
9 May 2019
Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair
Montaigne
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Michel de Montaigne. Best known for his influential Essays, Montaigne is regarded as the father of modern sceptical thought.
25 April 2013
Featuring: David Wootton, Terence Cave, Felicity Green
Sartre
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
7 October 2004
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells
Simone de Beauvoir
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.
22 October 2015
Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd
French Nobel laureates (4)
Bergson and Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.
9 May 2019
Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair
Camus
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Nobel Prize winning Algerian-French writer and existentialist philosopher Albert Camus.
3 January 2008
Featuring: Peter Dunwoodie, David Walker, Christina Howells
Sartre
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
7 October 2004
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells
The Curies
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the scientific achievements of the Curie family, Marie and Pierre and their daughter Irene Joliot-Curie, all three of whom won Nobel Prizes.
26 March 2015
Featuring: Patricia Fara, Robert Fox, Steven T Bramwell
Grand Croix of the Légion d'honneur (4)
Bergson and Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.
9 May 2019
Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair
Bismarck
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the original Iron Chancellor, Otto Von Bismarck, one of 19th Century Europe’s most influential statesmen and the founder of modern Germany.
22 March 2007
Featuring: Richard J Evans, Christopher Clark, Katharine Lerman
Louis Pasteur
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Louis Pasteur, microbiologist, developer of vaccines, saviour of the French beer and wine industries and preserver of milk.
18 May 2017
Featuring: Andrew Mendelsohn, Anne Hardy, Michael Worboys
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
23 May 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene
Philosophers of time (4)
Bergson and Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.
9 May 2019
Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair
Heraclitus
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the ancient Greek thinker Heraclitus, immortalised by later scholars as the Weeping Philosopher.
8 December 2011
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Peter Adamson, James Warren
Jorge Luis Borges
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges.
4 January 2007
Featuring: Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.
12 January 2017
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson
Anti-Catholicism in England (4)
Foxe's Book of Martyrs
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Foxe's Book of Martyrs, the celebrated sixteenth-century account of the suffering of Christian martyrs.
18 November 2010
Featuring: Diarmaid MacCulloch, Justin Champion, Elizabeth Evenden
The Dissolution of the Monasteries
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Henry VIII and the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Was Henry’s policy an act of grand larceny or the pious destruction of a corrupt institution?
27 March 2008
Featuring: Diarmaid MacCulloch, Diane Purkiss, George Bernard
The Glorious Revolution
Melvyn Bragg examines the Glorious Revolution of 1688 but were the events of 1688 really either Glorious or Revolutionary?
19 April 2001
Featuring: John Spurr, Rosemary Sweet, Scott Mandelbrote
The Gordon Riots
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss why a Westminster protest against 'Popery' in June 1780 led to widespread rioting across London, lethally suppressed.
2 May 2019
Featuring: Ian Haywood, Catriona Kennedy, Mark Knights
Julio-Claudian dynasty (4)
Agrippina the Younger
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Roman empress Agrippina the Younger, one of the most notorious and influential of the Roman empresses in the 1st century AD.
31 March 2016
Featuring: Catharine Edwards, Alice König, Matthew Nicholls
Nero
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the reputation of Nero, popular with his subjects but vilified in his lifetime and after and associated with the Beast in the Book of Revelation.
25 April 2019
Featuring: Maria Wyke, Matthew Nicholls, Shushma Malik
The Aeneid
Melvyn Bragg discusses ‘The Aeneid’, Virgil’s great epic poem that formed a founding narrative of Rome.
21 April 2005
Featuring: Edith Hall, Philip Hardie, Catharine Edwards
The Augustan Age
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the political regime and cultural influence of the Roman Emperor Augustus.
11 June 2009
Featuring: Mary Beard, Catharine Edwards, Duncan Kennedy
Bisexual men (4)
Nero
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the reputation of Nero, popular with his subjects but vilified in his lifetime and after and associated with the Beast in the Book of Revelation.
25 April 2019
Featuring: Maria Wyke, Matthew Nicholls, Shushma Malik
Oscar Wilde
Melvyn Bragg discusses Oscar Wilde, the Aesthetes and his literary legacy. Was Wilde a reactionary - the last of the romantics - or was he the midwife to modernism?
6 December 2001
Featuring: Valentine Cunningham, Regenia Gagnier, Neil Sammells
Siegfried Sassoon
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the war poet Siegfried Sassoon; a homosexual war hero who became a bitter opponent of the First World War and a devout Catholic.
7 June 2007
Featuring: Jean Moorcroft Wilson, Fran Brearton, Max Egremont
Wittgenstein
Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.
4 December 2003
Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn
Evolution (4)
Chance and Design
Melvyn Bragg discusses the questions and theories surrounding the idea of a grand design in the universe. Can the concept of the randomness of evolution be compatible with a belief in God?
13 February 2003
Featuring: Simon Conway Morris, Sandy Knapp, John Brooke
Evolution
Melvyn Bragg examines the future of gene therapy and advances in evolutionary biology. Could electronic devices discover the means of self-replication, and what would be the consequences?
15 April 1999
Featuring: John Maynard Smith, Colin Tudge
The Cambrian Period
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Cambrian period, a time when evolution took a leap, and life on this planet suddenly went to being large, complex, numerous and dizzyingly diverse.
17 February 2005
Featuring: Simon Conway Morris, Richard Corfield, Jane Francis
The Evolution of Teeth
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss ideas about the origins of teeth, their link to hard scales on fish such as sharks and why some species regenerate theirs but humans do not.
11 April 2019
Featuring: Gareth Fraser, Zerina Johanson, Philip Donoghue
Invasions of England (4)
The Danelaw
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how a series of Danish invasions, settlements and battles with Anglo-Saxons changed England in the 9th and 10th centuries.
28 March 2019
Featuring: Judith Jesch, John Hines, Jane Kershaw
The Glorious Revolution
Melvyn Bragg examines the Glorious Revolution of 1688 but were the events of 1688 really either Glorious or Revolutionary?
19 April 2001
Featuring: John Spurr, Rosemary Sweet, Scott Mandelbrote
The Jacobite Rebellion
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Jacobite Rebellion, the Stuart dynasty's final attempt to reclaim the throne of England.
8 May 2003
Featuring: Murray Pittock, Stana Nenadic, Allan Macinnes
The Spanish Armada
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Spanish Armada, the fleet which attempted to invade Elizabethan England in 1588.
7 October 2010
Featuring: Diane Purkiss, Maria Jose Rodriguez-Salgado, Nicholas Rodger
English Catholic poets (4)
Chaucer
Melvyn Bragg discusses Geoffrey Chaucer who immortalised the medieval pilgrimage and the diversity of 14th century English society, in his Canterbury Tales.
9 February 2006
Featuring: Carolyne Larrington, Helen Cooper, Ardis Butterfield
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the works of Hopkins, unpublished in his lifetime, who FR Leavis called 'the only influential poet of the Victorian age and the greatest'.
21 March 2019
Featuring: Catherine Phillips, Jane Wright, Martin Dubois
Pope
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the satirist Alexander Pope. One of the greatest poets of the English language, his brilliant satires have made him popular in our age but not in his own.
9 November 2006
Featuring: John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Valerie Rumbold
Siegfried Sassoon
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the war poet Siegfried Sassoon; a homosexual war hero who became a bitter opponent of the First World War and a devout Catholic.
7 June 2007
Featuring: Jean Moorcroft Wilson, Fran Brearton, Max Egremont
Philosophy of Aristotle (4)
Aristotle's Poetics
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aristotle's Poetics, the first and arguably most influential work of literary theory in history.
27 January 2011
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Nick Lowe, Stephen Halliwell
Aristotle's Politics
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most important works of political philosophy ever written - Aristotle’s ‘Politics.
6 November 2008
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Paul Cartledge, Annabel Brett
Aristotle's biology
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aristotle's method of biological investigation and the first systematic and thorough study of animals, which was unequalled for almost 2,000 years.
7 February 2019
Featuring: Armand Leroi, Myrto Hatzimichali, Sophia Connell
Virtue
Melvyn Bragg discusses a history of the concept of virtue from the ancient Greeks to modern ideas, and examines why we need it and what ideals of behaviour provide a universal framework for it.
28 February 2002
Featuring: Galen Strawson, Miranda Fricker, Roger Crisp
Christian ethicists (4)
Abelard and Heloise
Melvyn Bragg discusses the story of Abelard and Heloise, a medieval tale of literature and philosophy, love and scandal in the high Middle Ages.
5 May 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Henrietta Leyser, Michael Clanchy
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Bonhoeffer's ideas about Christian ethics, the role of the Church in a secular world, and his attempts to overthrow Hitler.
27 September 2018
Featuring: Stephen Plant, Eleanor McLaughlin, Tom Greggs
Kierkegaard
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.
20 March 2008
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt
St Thomas Aquinas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss St Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic Church's foremost western philosopher and theologian.
17 September 2009
Featuring: Martin Palmer, John Haldane, Annabel Brett
Trojan War literature (4)
The Aeneid
Melvyn Bragg discusses ‘The Aeneid’, Virgil’s great epic poem that formed a founding narrative of Rome.
21 April 2005
Featuring: Edith Hall, Philip Hardie, Catharine Edwards
The Iliad
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the story of a crucial 40 days in the 10-year battle for Troy, framed by Achilles' anger first at his leader Agamenmon and then at his enemy Hector.
13 September 2018
Featuring: Edith Hall, Barbara Graziosi, Paul Cartledge
The Odyssey
Melvyn Bragg discusses Homer’s Odyssey, the epic story of the Greek hero Odysseus’ journey back from Troy, and its foundational position in the history of western literature and ideas.
9 September 2004
Featuring: Simon Goldhill, Edith Hall, Oliver Taplin
The Oresteia
Melvyn Bragg discusses the ‘Oresteia’, the first of the Classical tragedies that come out of fifth century Athens. It is a tale of homecoming, murder, bloody vengeance and the establishment of Law.
29 December 2005
Featuring: Edith Hall, Simon Goldhill, Tom Healy
English socialists (4)
Alfred Russel Wallace
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Victorian pioneer of evolutionary theory Alfred Russel Wallace.
21 March 2013
Featuring: Steve Jones, George Beccaloni, Ted Benton
Annie Besant
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life of 19th-century writer and campaigner Annie Besant.
21 June 2012
Featuring: Lawrence Goldman, David Stack, Yasmin Khan
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
William Morris
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss some of the many aspects of William Morris: his activism, poetry and prose and his ideas on arts, crafts and work in an industrial world.
5 July 2018
Featuring: Ingrid Hanson, Marcus Waithe, Jane Thomas
Latin prose texts (4)
Augustine's Confessions
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss St Augustine's account of his life, sometimes called the first autobiography, written around AD397 after he had been appointed as Bishop of Hippo.
15 March 2018
Featuring: Kate Cooper, Morwenna Ludlow, Martin Palmer
Justinian's Legal Code
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss legal ideas developed under Byzantine emperor Justinian I in the C6th AD, which influenced the evolution of law in much of Western civilisation.
17 November 2016
Featuring: Caroline Humfress, Simon Corcoran, Paul du Plessis
The Consolations of Philosophy
Melvyn Bragg discusses Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy and asks whether philosophy should lead us toward consolation or lead us from it.
1 January 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Melissa Lane, Roger Scruton
Vitruvius and De Architectura
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Vitruvius's De Architectura, the first major treatise on architecture.
15 March 2012
Featuring: Serafina Cuomo, Robert Tavernor, Alice König
Deaths from cancer in England (4)
Ada Lovelace
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 19th century mathematician and hard living daughter of Lord Byron, Ada Lovelace.
6 March 2008
Featuring: Patricia Fara, Doron Swade, John Fuegi
Maxwell
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and work of the often overlooked 19th century Scottish scientist, and his enormous contribution to the creation of the technological age in which we live.
2 October 2003
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Peter Harman, Joanna Haigh
Rosalind Franklin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the achievements of the pioneering scientist Rosalind Franklin.
22 February 2018
Featuring: Patricia Fara, Jim Naismith, Judith Howard
Wittgenstein
Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.
4 December 2003
Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn
Jewish agnostics (4)
Hannah Arendt
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Hannah Arendt who examined totalitarianism and politics and, when covering the Eichmann trial, explored 'the banality of evil'.
2 February 2017
Featuring: Lyndsey Stonebridge, Frisbee Sheffield, Robert Eaglestone
Popper
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.
8 February 2007
Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright
Rosalind Franklin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the achievements of the pioneering scientist Rosalind Franklin.
22 February 2018
Featuring: Patricia Fara, Jim Naismith, Judith Howard
Wittgenstein
Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.
4 December 2003
Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn
People from the City of London (4)
Chaucer
Melvyn Bragg discusses Geoffrey Chaucer who immortalised the medieval pilgrimage and the diversity of 14th century English society, in his Canterbury Tales.
9 February 2006
Featuring: Carolyne Larrington, Helen Cooper, Ardis Butterfield
Milton
Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.
7 March 2002
Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden
Pope
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the satirist Alexander Pope. One of the greatest poets of the English language, his brilliant satires have made him popular in our age but not in his own.
9 November 2006
Featuring: John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Valerie Rumbold
Thomas Becket
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Becket, chancellor turned archbishop, who was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral and whose tomb became a centre of pilgrimage across Europe.
14 December 2017
Featuring: Laura Ashe, Michael Staunton, Danica Summerlin
Members of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities (4)
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Gauss, 'prince of mathematicians', including those on number theory, geometry, probability theory, astronomy and electromagnetism.
30 November 2017
Featuring: Marcus du Sautoy, Colva Roney-Dougal, Nick Evans
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
Humboldt
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Prussian naturalist and explorer, Alexander Von Humboldt. A hero in South America; Charles Darwin described him as ‘the greatest scientific traveller who ever lived’.
28 September 2006
Featuring: Jason Wilson, Patricia Fara, Jim Secord
French literary critics (4)
Germaine de Staël
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas, works and life of Germaine de Stael (1766-1817), a literary critic, author, opponent of Napoleon and developer of Romanticism.
16 November 2017
Featuring: Catriona Seth, Alison Finch, Katherine Astbury
Proust
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.
17 April 2003
Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser
Sartre
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
7 October 2004
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells
Simone de Beauvoir
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.
22 October 2015
Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd
Angelic visionaries (4)
Constantine the Great
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Constantine the Great, the Roman emperor who made Constantinople his capital rather than Rome and who legalised Christianity across the Empire.
5 October 2017
Featuring: Christopher Kelly, Lucy Grig, Greg Woolf
Hildegard of Bingen
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the medieval mystic, composer and writer Hildegard of Bingen.
26 June 2014
Featuring: Miri Rubin, William Flynn, Almut Suerbaum
Mary Magdalene
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Mary Magdalene, one of the best-known figures in the Bible.
25 February 2016
Featuring: Joanne Anderson, Eamon Duffy, Joan Taylor
St Thomas Aquinas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss St Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic Church's foremost western philosopher and theologian.
17 September 2009
Featuring: Martin Palmer, John Haldane, Annabel Brett
Ethical principles (4)
Duty
Melvyn Bragg discusses duty; the concept that others have a claim over our actions has been at the heart of the history of civilised society.
13 November 2003
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Annabel Brett, A. C. Grayling
Kant's Categorical Imperative
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of Kant's best known ideas: 'Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law'.
21 September 2017
Featuring: Alison Hills, David S. Oderberg, John Callanan
Progress
Melvyn Bragg examines whether while mankind has grown in years and knowledge, it has also progressed in terms of happiness and a truer understanding of the human condition.
18 November 1999
Featuring: Anthony O'Hear, Adam Phillips
Truth
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss philosophical approaches to truth.
18 December 2014
Featuring: Simon Blackburn, Jennifer Hornsby, Crispin Wright
Male characters in literature (4)
Eugene Onegin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837), often described as his masterpiece, which tells the tragic story of Onegin, Lensky and Tatyana.
22 June 2017
Featuring: Andrew Kahn, Emily Finer, Simon Dixon
Merlin
Melvyn Bragg discusses Merlin, prophet, magician, king maker and the original mad man of the woods, distraught at the death of his lord in battle.
30 June 2005
Featuring: Juliette Wood, Stephen Knight, Peter Forshaw
Robinson Crusoe
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Daniel Defoe's seminal novel Robinson Crusoe. Published in 1719, it was an immediate success and is considered the classic adventure story.
22 December 2011
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Judith Hawley, Bob Owens
Voltaire's Candide
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Voltaire's satirical novel Candide, first published in 1759.
3 May 2012
Featuring: David Wootton, Nicholas Cronk, Caroline Warman
English translators (4)
Caxton and the Printing Press
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss printer William Caxton and the impact of the printing press in England.
18 October 2012
Featuring: Richard Gameson, Julia Boffey, David Rundle
Chaucer
Melvyn Bragg discusses Geoffrey Chaucer who immortalised the medieval pilgrimage and the diversity of 14th century English society, in his Canterbury Tales.
9 February 2006
Featuring: Carolyne Larrington, Helen Cooper, Ardis Butterfield
Harriet Martineau
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Harriet Martineau who wrote extensively in the C19th on a wide range of subjects including abolition, and is called the mother of sociology.
8 December 2016
Featuring: Valerie Sanders, Karen O'Brien, Ella Dzelzainis
Roger Bacon
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss medieval English scholar Roger Bacon, an early pioneer of science who became known as Doctor Mirabilis.
20 April 2017
Featuring: Jack Cunningham, Amanda Power, Elly Truitt
Victorian women writers (4)
Annie Besant
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life of 19th-century writer and campaigner Annie Besant.
21 June 2012
Featuring: Lawrence Goldman, David Stack, Yasmin Khan
Christina Rossetti
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Victorian poet Christina Rossetti.
1 December 2011
Featuring: Dinah Birch, Rhian Williams, Nicholas Shrimpton
Elizabeth Gaskell's novel North and South
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, who set her 1855 novel in a version of Manchester she called Milton in the county of Darkshire.
9 March 2017
Featuring: Sally Shuttleworth, Dinah Birch, Jenny Uglow
Harriet Martineau
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Harriet Martineau who wrote extensively in the C19th on a wide range of subjects including abolition, and is called the mother of sociology.
8 December 2016
Featuring: Valerie Sanders, Karen O'Brien, Ella Dzelzainis
Silver Age Latin writers (4)
Pliny the Younger
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Roman lawyer and statesman Pliny the Younger, whose letters offer a fascinating insight into his life and the ancient world.
12 December 2013
Featuring: Catharine Edwards, Roy Gibson, Alice König
Pliny's Natural History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Pliny the Elder's Natural History, a comprehensive and influential encyclopedia of the natural sciences written in the first century AD.
8 July 2010
Featuring: Serafina Cuomo, Aude Doody, Liba Taub
Seneca the Younger
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Seneca: philosopher, playwright, tutor to Nero, one of the first great writers born in the new Roman empire after the fall of the Republic.
23 February 2017
Featuring: Mary Beard, Catharine Edwards, Alessandro Schiesaro
Tacitus and the Decadence of Rome
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Roman historian Tacitus, whose portrayal of Roman decadence influences the way we see Rome today.
10 July 2008
Featuring: Catharine Edwards, Ellen O'Gorman, Maria Wyke
Leipzig University alumni (4)
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.
12 January 2017
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson
Wagner
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life, and legacy of the German composer Richard Wagner, mentor of Nietzsche and disciple of Schopenhauer, who changed the face of 19th century opera.
20 June 2002
Featuring: John Deathridge, Lucy Beckett, Michael Tanner
19th-century British physicists (4)
John Dalton
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss scientist John Dalton, who pioneered the development of atomic theory and carried out research into meteorology and colour blindness.
27 October 2016
Featuring: Jim Bennett, Aileen Fyfe, James Sumner
Maxwell
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and work of the often overlooked 19th century Scottish scientist, and his enormous contribution to the creation of the technological age in which we live.
2 October 2003
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Peter Harman, Joanna Haigh
Michael Faraday
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Michael Faraday, the most famous British scientist of the 19th century.
25 December 2015
Featuring: Geoffrey Cantor, Laura Herz, Frank James
Rutherford
Melvyn Bragg discusses Ernest Rutherford. He is seen as the father of nuclear science, a great charismatic figure who mapped the landscape of the sub-atomic world.
19 February 2004
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Jim Al-Khalili, Patricia Fara
History of technology (4)
Consequences of the Industrial Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the far-reaching consequences of the Industrial Revolution, which brought widespread social and intellectual change to Britain.
30 December 2010
Featuring: Jane Humphries, Emma Griffin, Lawrence Goldman
The Industrial Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Industrial Revolution, a period of rapid technological development which brought widespread social and intellectual change to Britain.
23 December 2010
Featuring: Jeremy Black, Pat Hudson, William Ashworth
The Invention of Photography
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the development and impact of photography in the 1830s, with heliographs, sun pictures, photogenic drawing, Daguerre and Fox Talbot.
7 July 2016
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Elizabeth Edwards, Alison Morrison-Low
The Measurement of Time
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the measurement of time and the various methods used for doing so over millennia of human history.
29 March 2012
Featuring: Kristen Lippincott, Jim Bennett, Jonathan Betts
Sovereignty (4)
Sovereignty
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of the idea of sovereignty, from ancient Greece and Rome to wars in France in the 1500s, to Thomas Hobbes and the revolutionary era.
30 June 2016
Featuring: Melissa Lane, Richard Bourke, Tim Stanton
The Divine Right of Kings
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Divine Right of Kings. The idea that kingly authority derives from God alone bit deep into the culture of 17th century Britain.
11 October 2007
Featuring: Justin Champion, Thomas Healy, Clare Jackson
The Social Contract
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Social Contract. A key idea in political philosophy, it states that political authority is held through a contract with those to be ruled.
7 February 2008
Featuring: Melissa Lane, Susan James, Karen O'Brien
The War of 1812
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the War of 1812, the conflict between America and Great Britain which is sometimes referred to as the second American War of Independence.
31 January 2013
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Lawrence Goldman, Frank Cogliano
Women mystics (4)
Annie Besant
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life of 19th-century writer and campaigner Annie Besant.
21 June 2012
Featuring: Lawrence Goldman, David Stack, Yasmin Khan
Hildegard of Bingen
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the medieval mystic, composer and writer Hildegard of Bingen.
26 June 2014
Featuring: Miri Rubin, William Flynn, Almut Suerbaum
Margery Kempe and English Mysticism
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Margery Kempe (1373-1438), the English mystic who went to Jerusalem and dictated her life story, said to be the first autobiography in English.
2 June 2016
Featuring: Miri Rubin, Katherine Lewis, Anthony Bale
Simone Weil
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil. Admired by Albert Camus and Iris Murdoch, she achieved a great deal in her short life.
15 November 2012
Featuring: Beatrice Han-Pile, Stephen Plant, David Levy
Female characters in literature (4)
Jane Eyre
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, first published in 1847 under the pseudonym Currer Bell.
18 June 2015
Featuring: Dinah Birch, Karen O'Brien, Sara Lyons
Madame Bovary
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the literary sensation caused by the trial for indecency of Gustave Flaubert's novel Madame Bovary.
12 July 2007
Featuring: Andy Martin, Mary Orr, Robert Gildea
Mrs Dalloway
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs Dalloway, published in 1925.
3 July 2014
Featuring: Hermione Lee, Jane Goldman, Kathryn Simpson
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, which challenged Victorian morality and made Hardy's fortune when published in the 1890s.
5 May 2016
Featuring: Dinah Birch, Francis O'Gorman, Jane Thomas
English physicists (4)
Hobbes
Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.
1 December 2005
Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett
Michael Faraday
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Michael Faraday, the most famous British scientist of the 19th century.
25 December 2015
Featuring: Geoffrey Cantor, Laura Herz, Frank James
Robert Boyle
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Robert Boyle, a pioneering scientist and one of the first Fellows of the Royal Society.
12 June 2014
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Michael Hunter, Anna Marie Roos
Robert Hooke
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Robert Hooke, the 17th-century scientist with a wide variety of interests from elasticity to microscopes who fell out with Newton.
18 February 2016
Featuring: David Wootton, Patricia Fara, Rob Iliffe
English republicans (4)
Mary Wollstonecraft
Melvyn Bragg and guests John Mullan, Karen O'Brien and Barbara Taylor discuss the life and ideas of the pioneering British Enlightenment thinker Mary Wollstonecraft.
31 December 2009
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Mullan, Barbara Taylor
Mill
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.
18 May 2006
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan
Milton
Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.
7 March 2002
Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden
Thomas Paine's Common Sense
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.
21 January 2016
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson
People associated with electricity (4)
Benjamin Franklin
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.
1 March 2012
Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara
Maxwell
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and work of the often overlooked 19th century Scottish scientist, and his enormous contribution to the creation of the technological age in which we live.
2 October 2003
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Peter Harman, Joanna Haigh
Michael Faraday
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Michael Faraday, the most famous British scientist of the 19th century.
25 December 2015
Featuring: Geoffrey Cantor, Laura Herz, Frank James
Thomas Edison
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of Thomas Edison, one of the great inventors and cultural figures of modern America.
9 December 2010
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Kathleen Burk, Iwan Morus
Former Roman Catholics (4)
Hitler in History
Melvyn Bragg examines the debate between various historiographical theories. How do Intentionalist, Structralist and Marxist views of history explain events in Nazi Germany?
5 October 2000
Featuring: Ian Kershaw, Niall Ferguson, Mary Fulbrook
Proust
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.
17 April 2003
Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser
Simone de Beauvoir
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.
22 October 2015
Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd
The Curies
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the scientific achievements of the Curie family, Marie and Pierre and their daughter Irene Joliot-Curie, all three of whom won Nobel Prizes.
26 March 2015
Featuring: Patricia Fara, Robert Fox, Steven T Bramwell
English satirists (4)
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aldous Huxley's dystopian 1932 novel Brave New World and its vision of a future of test tube babies, free love and round-the-clock surveillance.
9 April 2009
Featuring: David Bradshaw, Daniel Pick, Michèle Barrett
Dickens
Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?
12 July 2001
Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen
Fanny Burney
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the 18th-century writer Fanny Burney, also known as Frances D'Arblay and Frances Burney, best known for her novel Evelina.
23 April 2015
Featuring: Nicole Pohl, Judith Hawley, John Mullan
Swift's A Modest Proposal
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jonathan Swift's satirical 1729 pamphlet A Modest Proposal, which reveals much about attitudes to the Irish and the poor in 18th-Century Britain.
29 January 2009
Featuring: John Mullan, Judith Hawley, Ian McBride
6th-century BC Greek people (4)
Aesop
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aesop, legendary author of the famous collection of fables.
20 November 2014
Featuring: Pavlos Avlamis, Lucy Grig, Simon Goldhill
Heraclitus
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the ancient Greek thinker Heraclitus, immortalised by later scholars as the Weeping Philosopher.
8 December 2011
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Peter Adamson, James Warren
Pythagoras
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and influence of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans.
10 December 2009
Featuring: Ian Stewart, Serafina Cuomo, John O'Connor
Sappho
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Greek poet Sappho, one of antiquity's greatest exponents of lyric poetry.
9 April 2015
Featuring: Edith Hall, Margaret Reynolds, Dirk Obbink
Physics beyond the Standard Model (4)
Dark matter
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss dark matter, the mysterious and invisible substance that is believed to make up most of the universe.
12 March 2015
Featuring: Carolin Crawford, Gresham Professor of Astronomy Carlos Frenk, Anne Green
Grand unified theory
Melvyn Bragg examines 20th century’s physics’ search for one theory that can explain the behaviour of the smallest particle as well as the movements of the largest planets in the Universe.
24 February 2000
Featuring: Brian Greene, Martin Rees
Quantum Gravity
Melvyn Bragg discusses the attempts to understand the Quantum world, which deals with the smallest invisible particles, and to which classical theories of gravity, motion and relativity do not apply.
22 February 2001
Featuring: John Gribbin, Lee Smolin, Janna Levin
Theories of Everything
Melvyn Bragg discusses the prospect of a single theory to solve the riddle of black holes, the Big Bang and the mystery of time travel. Why do we need one and what would it mean if we had it?
25 March 2004
Featuring: Brian Greene, John Barrow, Val Gibson
Theoretical physics (4)
Dark matter
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss dark matter, the mysterious and invisible substance that is believed to make up most of the universe.
12 March 2015
Featuring: Carolin Crawford, Gresham Professor of Astronomy Carlos Frenk, Anne Green
Relativity
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Einstein's theory of relativity, a hypothetical framework that transformed our understanding of the universe.
6 June 2013
Featuring: Ruth Gregory, Martin Rees, Roger Penrose
Symmetry
Melvyn Bragg discusses symmetry in art and nature. From snowflakes and butterflies to the music of Bach and the poems of Pushkin.
19 April 2007
Featuring: Fay Dowker, Marcus du Sautoy, Ian Stewart
Theories of Everything
Melvyn Bragg discusses the prospect of a single theory to solve the riddle of black holes, the Big Bang and the mystery of time travel. Why do we need one and what would it mean if we had it?
25 March 2004
Featuring: Brian Greene, John Barrow, Val Gibson
Unsolved problems in astronomy (4)
Dark Energy
Melvyn Bragg discusses the recently discovered, and mysteriously named, 'dark energy' which may make up 70% of the universe.
17 March 2005
Featuring: Martin Rees, Carolin Crawford, Roger Penrose
Dark matter
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss dark matter, the mysterious and invisible substance that is believed to make up most of the universe.
12 March 2015
Featuring: Carolin Crawford, Gresham Professor of Astronomy Carlos Frenk, Anne Green
Extra Terrestrials
Melvyn Bragg discusses whether there are reasons to suppose that some form of life might exist beyond, or even within, our solar system and what our chances of ever discovering such a planet are.
4 April 2002
Featuring: Simon Goodwin, Heather Couper, Ian Stewart
The Universe's Shape
Melvyn Bragg discusses shape, size and topology of the universe and examines theories about its expansion. If it is already infinite, how can it be getting any bigger? And is there really only one?
7 February 2002
Featuring: Martin Rees, Julian Barbour, Janna Levin
Criticism of rationalism (4)
David Hume
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.
6 October 2011
Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris
Existentialism
Melvyn Bragg discusses existentialism, a twentieth century philosophy of everyday life concerned with the individual, and his or her place within the world.
28 June 2001
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Christina Howells, Simon Critchley
Phenomenology
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosophical movement phenomenology.
22 January 2015
Featuring: Simon Glendinning, Joanna Hodge, Stephen Mulhall
Sturm und Drang
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the 18th-century German artistic movement known as Sturm und Drang, whose best-known exponents included Goethe and Schiller.
14 October 2010
Featuring: T. C. W. Blanning, Susanne Kord, Maike Oergel
Philosophy of mind (4)
Perception and the Senses
Melvyn Bragg discusses perception: how the brain reacts to the mass of data continually crowding it and examines what governs our perception of the world.
28 April 2005
Featuring: Richard Gregory, David Moore, Gemma Calvert
Phenomenology
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosophical movement phenomenology.
22 January 2015
Featuring: Simon Glendinning, Joanna Hodge, Stephen Mulhall
The Sublime
Melvyn Bragg discusses a transcendental idea that 18th century British artists, poets, philosophers and scientists seized upon and adapted to the intellectual and physical landscape.
12 February 2004
Featuring: Janet Todd, Annie Janowitz, Peter de Bolla
Truth
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss philosophical approaches to truth.
18 December 2014
Featuring: Simon Blackburn, Jennifer Hornsby, Crispin Wright
Theory of mind (4)
Cogito Ergo Sum
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss one of the most famous statements in philosophy, 'Cogito ergo sum', Rene Descartes' attempt to establish what we can truly know.
28 April 2011
Featuring: Susan James, John Cottingham, Stephen Mulhall
Consciousness
Melvyn Bragg examines why the elusiveness and impenetrability of consciousness continues to fascinate both philosophers and scientists. Is the human mind just not built to understand its own basis?
25 November 1999
Featuring: Ted Honderich, Roger Penrose
Phenomenology
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosophical movement phenomenology.
22 January 2015
Featuring: Simon Glendinning, Joanna Hodge, Stephen Mulhall
The Brain and Consciousness
Melvyn Bragg discusses how our increased knowledge of the functioning of the brain has changed our feelings about our own natures, and our approach to the behaviour and treatment of others.
19 November 1998
Featuring: Steven Rose, Dan Robinson
Concepts in logic (4)
Infinity
Melvyn Bragg discusses a core concept in modern maths which philosophers and mathematicians have continued to grapple with; what is mathematical infinity and does it exist in nature?
23 October 2003
Featuring: Ian Stewart, Robert Kaplan, Sarah Rees
Perception and the Senses
Melvyn Bragg discusses perception: how the brain reacts to the mass of data continually crowding it and examines what governs our perception of the world.
28 April 2005
Featuring: Richard Gregory, David Moore, Gemma Calvert
The Music of the Spheres
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the music of the spheres, the idea that the revolution of the planets generates a celestial harmony of profound beauty
19 June 2008
Featuring: Peter Forshaw, Jim Bennett, Angela Voss
Truth
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss philosophical approaches to truth.
18 December 2014
Featuring: Simon Blackburn, Jennifer Hornsby, Crispin Wright
Fabulists (4)
Aesop
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aesop, legendary author of the famous collection of fables.
20 November 2014
Featuring: Pavlos Avlamis, Lucy Grig, Simon Goldhill
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
Kafka's The Trial
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Franz Kafka's novel The Trial.
27 November 2014
Featuring: Elizabeth Boa, Steve Connor, Ritchie Robertson
Physical phenomena (4)
Nuclear Fusion
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the history and science of nuclear fusion, the process that powers stars.
30 October 2014
Featuring: Philippa Browning, Steve Cowley, Justin Wark
Radiation
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of the discovery of radiation, from the idea that light consisted of waves, through electromagnetism to the naming of gamma rays.
12 November 2009
Featuring: Jim Al-Khalili, Frank Close, Frank James
The Vacuum of Space
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Vacuum of Space, from the innards of the atom to the outer reaches of space.
30 April 2009
Featuring: Frank Close, Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Ruth Gregory
Time
Melvyn Bragg examines the history of mankind’s attempt to understand the nature of time. Does it exist independently of our perception of it, or is it merely a figment of our imagination?
30 December 1999
Featuring: Neil Johnson, Lee Smolin
Irish Anglicans (4)
Edmund Burke
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke, whose views on revolution in America and France were hugely influential.
3 June 2010
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Richard Bourke, John Keane
Robert Boyle
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Robert Boyle, a pioneering scientist and one of the first Fellows of the Royal Society.
12 June 2014
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Michael Hunter, Anna Marie Roos
Yeats and Irish Politics
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poet W.B. Yeats and Irish politics from the suspension of home rule to the division of Ireland.
17 April 2008
Featuring: Roy Foster, Fran Brearton, Warwick Gould
Yeats and Mysticism
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and beliefs of the Irish Poet W B Yeats and explores how a passion for magic and mysticism served and stood alongside his poetry.
31 January 2002
Featuring: Roy Foster, Warwick Gould, Brenda Maddox
Independent scientists (4)
Benjamin Franklin
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.
1 March 2012
Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara
Darwin: On the Origins of Charles Darwin
Melvyn Bragg presents a series about the life and work of Charles Darwin. Darwin's early life and time at Cambridge, where his interests shifted from religion to natural science.
5 January 2009
Featuring: Jim Moore, Steve Jones, David Norman, Colin Higgins
Humboldt
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Prussian naturalist and explorer, Alexander Von Humboldt. A hero in South America; Charles Darwin described him as ‘the greatest scientific traveller who ever lived’.
28 September 2006
Featuring: Jason Wilson, Patricia Fara, Jim Secord
Robert Boyle
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Robert Boyle, a pioneering scientist and one of the first Fellows of the Royal Society.
12 June 2014
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Michael Hunter, Anna Marie Roos
Members of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (4)
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
Humboldt
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Prussian naturalist and explorer, Alexander Von Humboldt. A hero in South America; Charles Darwin described him as ‘the greatest scientific traveller who ever lived’.
28 September 2006
Featuring: Jason Wilson, Patricia Fara, Jim Secord
Weber's The Protestant Ethic
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Max Weber's book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
27 March 2014
Featuring: Peter Ghosh, Sam Whimster, Linda Woodhead
Geology theories (4)
Ageing the Earth
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Age of the Earth, and how to make sense of four and half billions years of time.
20 November 2003
Featuring: Richard Corfield, Hazel Rymer, Henry Gee
Catastrophism
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Catastrophism, the idea that the geological record was shaped by a series of natural disasters early in the Earth's history.
30 January 2014
Featuring: Andrew Scott, Jan Zalasiewicz, Leucha Veneer
Plate Tectonics
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how the geological theory of plate tectonics revolutionised our understanding of the planet on which we live
24 January 2008
Featuring: Richard Corfield, Joe Cann, Lynne Frostick
The Earth's Origins
Melvyn Bragg discusses the origins of the Earth, from creation theory to modern scientific thought.
5 July 2001
Featuring: Simon Winchester, Cherry Lewis, John Cosgrove
Christian humanists (4)
Blaise Pascal
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the French polymath Blaise Pascal.
19 September 2013
Featuring: David Wootton, Michael Moriarty, Michela Massimi
Erasmus
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the Dutch humanist scholar Desiderius Erasmus, one of the most significant figures of the Renaissance.
9 February 2012
Featuring: Diarmaid MacCulloch, Eamon Duffy, Jill Kraye
Kierkegaard
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.
20 March 2008
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt
Montaigne
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Michel de Montaigne. Best known for his influential Essays, Montaigne is regarded as the father of modern sceptical thought.
25 April 2013
Featuring: David Wootton, Terence Cave, Felicity Green
Critics of atheism (4)
Avicenna
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Avicenna, among the most important philosophers in the history of Islam.
8 November 2007
Featuring: Peter Adamson, Amira Bennison, Nader El-Bizri
Blaise Pascal
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the French polymath Blaise Pascal.
19 September 2013
Featuring: David Wootton, Michael Moriarty, Michela Massimi
Edmund Burke
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke, whose views on revolution in America and France were hugely influential.
3 June 2010
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Richard Bourke, John Keane
St Thomas Aquinas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss St Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic Church's foremost western philosopher and theologian.
17 September 2009
Featuring: Martin Palmer, John Haldane, Annabel Brett
Spirituality (4)
Gnosticism
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Gnosticism, a religious sect associated with early Christianity.
2 May 2013
Featuring: Martin Palmer, Caroline Humfress, Alastair Logan
Neoplatonism
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Neoplatonism, a mystical school of thought founded by the third century philosopher Plotinus.
19 April 2012
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Peter Adamson, Anne Sheppard
Prayer
Melvyn Bragg examines the purpose and effects of prayer, and discusses whether it is an instrument of action or simply the most essential form of self analysis.
23 December 1999
Featuring: Russell Stannard, Andrew Samuels
Shinto
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Japanese belief system of Shinto.
22 September 2011
Featuring: Martin Palmer, Richard Bowring, Lucia Dolce
Philosophical schools and traditions (4)
Epicureanism
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Epicureanism, the system of philosophy based on the teachings of Epicurus and founded in the 4th century BC.
7 February 2013
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, James Warren
Logical Positivism
Melvyn Bragg and guests including Barry Smith discuss Logical Positivism, the radical philosophy of the Vienna Circle.
2 July 2009
Featuring: Barry Smith, Nancy Cartwright, Thomas Uebel
Pragmatism
Melvyn Bragg discusses the American philosophy of pragmatism which purported that knowledge is only meaningful when coupled with action.
17 November 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Julian Baggini, Miranda Fricker
Progress
Melvyn Bragg examines whether while mankind has grown in years and knowledge, it has also progressed in terms of happiness and a truer understanding of the human condition.
18 November 1999
Featuring: Anthony O'Hear, Adam Phillips
Wars involving the United Kingdom (4)
The Boxer Rebellion
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Boxer Rebellion, when the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists purged China of foreign influences in the summer of 1900.
19 March 2009
Featuring: Frances Wood, Rana Mitter, R. G. Tiedemann
The Indian Rebellion
Melvyn Bragg and guests Faisal Devji, Shruti Kapila and Chandrika Kaul discuss the Indian Mutiny of 1857 and the rebellion which followed.
18 February 2010
Featuring: Chandrika Kaul, Faisal Devji, Shruti Kapila
The Taiping Rebellion
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Taiping Rebellion, a Chinese civil war which claimed around 20 million lives in the 19th century.
24 February 2011
Featuring: Rana Mitter, Frances Wood, Julia Lovell
The War of 1812
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the War of 1812, the conflict between America and Great Britain which is sometimes referred to as the second American War of Independence.
31 January 2013
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Lawrence Goldman, Frank Cogliano
English social commentators (4)
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Dickens
Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?
12 July 2001
Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen
Hobbes
Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.
1 December 2005
Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett
Mill
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.
18 May 2006
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan
Free speech activists (4)
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Mill
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.
18 May 2006
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan
Milton
Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.
7 March 2002
Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden
Washington and the American Revolution
Melvyn Bragg discusses the first President of the United States, George Washington, and the people and ideas that saw the American Revolution overthrow British rule in 1775.
24 June 2004
Featuring: Carol Berkin, Simon Middleton, Colin Bonwick
Freethought writers (4)
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
David Hume
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.
6 October 2011
Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
Nonviolence advocates (4)
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Pythagoras
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and influence of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans.
10 December 2009
Featuring: Ian Stewart, Serafina Cuomo, John O'Connor
Simone Weil
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil. Admired by Albert Camus and Iris Murdoch, she achieved a great deal in her short life.
15 November 2012
Featuring: Beatrice Han-Pile, Stephen Plant, David Levy
Tolstoy
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and times of the 19th century Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, whose novels such as War and Peace gave expression to the compelling moral and social questions of their day.
25 April 2002
Featuring: A. N. Wilson, Catriona Kelly, Sarah Hudspith
Artificial intelligence (4)
Artificial Intelligence
Melvyn Bragg discusses artificial intelligence and whether a computer could imitate the operations of the human mind.
8 December 2005
Featuring: Jon Agar, Alison Adam, Igor Aleksander
Artificial Intelligence
Melvyn Bragg discusses artificial intelligence and whether a computer could imitate the operations of the human mind.
8 December 2005
Featuring: Jon Agar, Alison Adam, Igor Aleksander
Game Theory
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss game theory, the mathematical study of decision-making.
10 May 2012
Featuring: Ian Stewart, Andrew Colman, Richard Bradley
The Mind/Body Problem
Melvyn Bragg discusses the history of thought about the mind/body problem in philosophy. Does the mind rule the body or the body rule the mind? And where does the mind reside?
13 January 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Julian Baggini, Sue James
Empiricism (4)
Empiricism
Melvyn Bragg discusses the development of the idea formulated by John Locke that all knowledge arises from experience, and looks at its effect on the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution.
10 June 2004
Featuring: Judith Hawley, Murray Pittock, Jonathan Rée
Logical Positivism
Melvyn Bragg and guests including Barry Smith discuss Logical Positivism, the radical philosophy of the Vienna Circle.
2 July 2009
Featuring: Barry Smith, Nancy Cartwright, Thomas Uebel
Pragmatism
Melvyn Bragg discusses the American philosophy of pragmatism which purported that knowledge is only meaningful when coupled with action.
17 November 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Julian Baggini, Miranda Fricker
The Scientific method
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Scientific Method, the systematic and analytical approach to scientific discovery.
26 January 2012
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, John Worrall, Michela Massimi
British political philosophers (4)
David Hume
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.
6 October 2011
Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris
Edmund Burke
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke, whose views on revolution in America and France were hugely influential.
3 June 2010
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Richard Bourke, John Keane
Mill
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.
18 May 2006
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan
Popper
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.
8 February 2007
Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright
Neuroscience (4)
Neuroscience
Melvyn Bragg and guests David Papineau, Martin Conway and Gemma Calvert discuss recent developments in neuroscience and examine the relationship between the mind and the brain.
13 November 2008
Featuring: Martin Conway, Gemma Calvert, David Papineau
Neuroscience in the 20th Century
Melvyn Bragg discusses the history of neuroscience, how far scientists have got with understanding the brain and what their research can tell us about ourselves and the world we live in.
24 December 1998
Featuring: Susan Greenfield, Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
The Mind/Body Problem
Melvyn Bragg discusses the history of thought about the mind/body problem in philosophy. Does the mind rule the body or the body rule the mind? And where does the mind reside?
13 January 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Julian Baggini, Sue James
The Nervous System
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the history and science of the nervous system, the network of tissues which allows parts of the body to communicate with each other.
10 February 2011
Featuring: Colin Blakemore, Vivian Nutton, Tilli Tansey
Rhetoric (4)
Common Sense Philosophy
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss 18th century common sense philosophy which involves the most profound questions about human knowledge we are capable of asking.
21 June 2007
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Melissa Lane, Alexander Broadie
Rhetoric
Melvyn Bragg discusses Rhetoric, the art of speaking which is an expression of inner virtue and also fundamental to ideas about democracy.
28 October 2004
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Thomas Healy, Ceri Sullivan
Roman Satire
Melvyn Bragg and guests Mary Beard, Denis Feeney and Duncan Kennedy discuss Roman satire.
22 April 2010
Featuring: Mary Beard, Denis Feeney, Duncan Kennedy
The Examined Life
Melvyn Bragg discusses what self-examination through philosophy can teach us about living our lives, and where it ranks in our quest for self-knowledge alongside science, the arts and religion.
9 May 2002
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Julian Baggini
Cultural studies (4)
Cultural Imperialism
Melvyn Bragg discusses the idea that a dominating power such as ancient Greece, Persia, Rome, Islam, Britain and now America can exert a cultural and imitative influence.
27 June 2002
Featuring: Linda Colley, Phillip Dodd, Mary Beard
Cultural rights in the 20th Century
Melvyn Bragg examines the impact of globalisation on human rights. How possible is it to place one set of societal traditions within another and what does that do to the identity of both groups?
10 December 1998
Featuring: Homi Bhabha, John N. Gray
Heritage
Melvyn Bragg discusses the interconnections between heritage culture and the study of history, and the role they have both played in the formation of the British national identity.
18 July 2002
Featuring: David Cannadine, Miri Rubin, Peter Mandler
The Frankfurt School
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Frankfurt School, a group of influential German thinkers who argued that culture keeps people passive.
14 January 2010
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Esther Leslie, Raymond Geuss
History of mathematics (4)
Pythagoras
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and influence of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans.
10 December 2009
Featuring: Ian Stewart, Serafina Cuomo, John O'Connor
Renaissance Maths
Melvyn Bragg discusses Renaissance Mathematics and the change in the understanding of numbers, movement, time and even nature itself, culminating in the calculus of Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz.
2 June 2005
Featuring: Robert D. Kaplan, Jim Bennett, Jackie Stedall
The Music of the Spheres
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the music of the spheres, the idea that the revolution of the planets generates a celestial harmony of profound beauty
19 June 2008
Featuring: Peter Forshaw, Jim Bennett, Angela Voss
Wittgenstein
Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.
4 December 2003
Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn
Irish male poets (4)
Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce's groundbreaking 1916 novel about growing up in Catholic Ireland.
26 November 2009
Featuring: Roy Foster, Katherine Mullin, Jeri Johnson
Swift's A Modest Proposal
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jonathan Swift's satirical 1729 pamphlet A Modest Proposal, which reveals much about attitudes to the Irish and the poor in 18th-Century Britain.
29 January 2009
Featuring: John Mullan, Judith Hawley, Ian McBride
Yeats and Irish Politics
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poet W.B. Yeats and Irish politics from the suspension of home rule to the division of Ireland.
17 April 2008
Featuring: Roy Foster, Fran Brearton, Warwick Gould
Yeats and Mysticism
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and beliefs of the Irish Poet W B Yeats and explores how a passion for magic and mysticism served and stood alongside his poetry.
31 January 2002
Featuring: Roy Foster, Warwick Gould, Brenda Maddox
Holy Grail (4)
Merlin
Melvyn Bragg discusses Merlin, prophet, magician, king maker and the original mad man of the woods, distraught at the death of his lord in battle.
30 June 2005
Featuring: Juliette Wood, Stephen Knight, Peter Forshaw
The Fisher King
Melvyn Bragg and guests will be delving into the world of medieval myth and legend in pursuit of the powerful and enigmatic Fisher King.
17 January 2008
Featuring: Carolyne Larrington, Stephen Knight, Juliette Wood
The Holy Grail
Melvyn Bragg discusses the sacred allure of the Holy Grail which has fascinated writers for a thousand years.
15 May 2003
Featuring: Carolyne Larrington, Jonathan Riley-Smith, Juliette Wood
The Waste Land and Modernity
Neoclassical writers (4)
Milton
Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.
7 March 2002
Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden
Pope
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the satirist Alexander Pope. One of the greatest poets of the English language, his brilliant satires have made him popular in our age but not in his own.
9 November 2006
Featuring: John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Valerie Rumbold
Swift's A Modest Proposal
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jonathan Swift's satirical 1729 pamphlet A Modest Proposal, which reveals much about attitudes to the Irish and the poor in 18th-Century Britain.
29 January 2009
Featuring: John Mullan, Judith Hawley, Ian McBride
The Scriblerus Club
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Scriblerus Club which included some of the sharpest satirists of the 18th century.
9 June 2005
Featuring: John Mullan, Judith Hawley, Marcus Walsh
Emergence (4)
Consciousness
Melvyn Bragg examines why the elusiveness and impenetrability of consciousness continues to fascinate both philosophers and scientists. Is the human mind just not built to understand its own basis?
25 November 1999
Featuring: Ted Honderich, Roger Penrose
Money
Melvyn Bragg examines whether economic factors are really behind all historical events.
1 March 2001
Featuring: Niall Ferguson, Richard J. Evans, Jane Humphries
The Brain and Consciousness
Melvyn Bragg discusses how our increased knowledge of the functioning of the brain has changed our feelings about our own natures, and our approach to the behaviour and treatment of others.
19 November 1998
Featuring: Steven Rose, Dan Robinson
Vitalism
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Vitalism, an 18th and 19th century quest for the spark of life and the science behind Frankenstein.
16 October 2008
Featuring: Patricia Fara, Andrew Mendelsohn, Pietro Corsi
Philosophy of love (4)
Friendship
Melvyn Bragg discusses the concept of friendship, considered in antiquity as being an essential constituent of both a good society and a good life.
2 March 2006
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Mark Vernon, John Mullan
Happiness
Melvyn Bragg discusses whether 'happiness' means living a life of pleasure or of virtue. How much does this ancient philosophical debate still define what it means to be happy today?
24 January 2002
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Simon Blackburn, A. C. Grayling
Marriage
Melvyn Bragg discusses the history of the institution of marriage from ancient Greeks and Babylonian times to today, and examines how monogamy came to be the favoured mode in the West.
21 March 2002
Featuring: Janet Soskice, Frederik Pedersen, Christina Hardyment
The Philosophy of Love
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosophy of love, a search for a completeness in human nature.
29 March 2001
Featuring: Roger Scruton, Angie Hobbs, Thomas Docherty
Anthropology (4)
Archaeology and Imperialism
Melvyn Bragg discusses the link between archaeology and imperialism, and why there was such a fascination with Egypt, Greece and Mesopotamia in the 18th and 19th centuries.
14 April 2005
Featuring: Tim Champion, Richard Parkinson, Eleanor Robson
Human Evolution
Melvyn Bragg discusses the story of human evolution, a tale not of one species, but of many – some of whom walked the Earth at the same time.
16 February 2006
Featuring: Steve Jones, Fred Spoor, Margaret Clegg
Masculinity in Literature
Melvyn Bragg discusses the changing archetypes of masculinity in 20th century literature, from Hemingway to Hornby, and examines whether the British ideal is at odds with its American counterpart.
20 January 2000
Featuring: Martin Amis, Cora Kaplan
Progress
Melvyn Bragg examines whether while mankind has grown in years and knowledge, it has also progressed in terms of happiness and a truer understanding of the human condition.
18 November 1999
Featuring: Anthony O'Hear, Adam Phillips
Ancient Greek metaphilosophers, Ancient Greek metaphysicians, Ancient Greek ethicists (4)
Heraclitus
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the ancient Greek thinker Heraclitus, immortalised by later scholars as the Weeping Philosopher.
8 December 2011
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Peter Adamson, James Warren
Plato's Gorgias
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock
25 November 2021
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh
Pythagoras
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and influence of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans.
10 December 2009
Featuring: Ian Stewart, Serafina Cuomo, John O'Connor
Socrates
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.
27 September 2007
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett
History of Catholicism in England, English Roman Catholic saints (4)
Saint Cuthbert
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life of the Northumbrian monk, priest and hermit who lived on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne and became one of England's most revered saints.
28 January 2021
Featuring: Jane Hawkes, Sarah Foot, John Hines
St Hilda
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss St Hilda, who led a large and influential network of monasteries in 7th century Britain.
5 April 2007
Featuring: John Blair, Rosemary Cramp, Sarah Foot
The Venerable Bede
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Venerable Bede, who revolutionised history and scholarship, and became adopted by Rome as the last of the founding fathers of Christian religion.
25 November 2004
Featuring: Richard Gameson, Sarah Foot, Michelle Brown
Thomas Becket
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Becket, chancellor turned archbishop, who was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral and whose tomb became a centre of pilgrimage across Europe.
14 December 2017
Featuring: Laura Ashe, Michael Staunton, Danica Summerlin
20th-century Irish male writers, 20th-century Irish poets, 20th-century Irish dramatists and playwrights (4)
Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce's groundbreaking 1916 novel about growing up in Catholic Ireland.
26 November 2009
Featuring: Roy Foster, Katherine Mullin, Jeri Johnson
Samuel Beckett
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the author of Waiting for Godot, who lived in Paris and wrote in French as he found that more difficult than writing in English
17 January 2019
Featuring: Steven Connor, Laura Salisbury, Mark Nixon
Yeats and Irish Politics
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poet W.B. Yeats and Irish politics from the suspension of home rule to the division of Ireland.
17 April 2008
Featuring: Roy Foster, Fran Brearton, Warwick Gould
Yeats and Mysticism
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and beliefs of the Irish Poet W B Yeats and explores how a passion for magic and mysticism served and stood alongside his poetry.
31 January 2002
Featuring: Roy Foster, Warwick Gould, Brenda Maddox
American political philosophers, American social commentators (4)
Benjamin Franklin
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.
1 March 2012
Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara
Hannah Arendt
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Hannah Arendt who examined totalitarianism and politics and, when covering the Eichmann trial, explored 'the banality of evil'.
2 February 2017
Featuring: Lyndsey Stonebridge, Frisbee Sheffield, Robert Eaglestone
Thomas Paine's Common Sense
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.
21 January 2016
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson
Thoreau and the American Idyll
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the American 19th century writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau
15 January 2009
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Tim Morris, Stephen Fender
Irish fantasy writers, Anglo-Irish artists (4)
Oscar Wilde
Melvyn Bragg discusses Oscar Wilde, the Aesthetes and his literary legacy. Was Wilde a reactionary - the last of the romantics - or was he the midwife to modernism?
6 December 2001
Featuring: Valentine Cunningham, Regenia Gagnier, Neil Sammells
Swift's A Modest Proposal
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jonathan Swift's satirical 1729 pamphlet A Modest Proposal, which reveals much about attitudes to the Irish and the poor in 18th-Century Britain.
29 January 2009
Featuring: John Mullan, Judith Hawley, Ian McBride
Yeats and Irish Politics
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poet W.B. Yeats and Irish politics from the suspension of home rule to the division of Ireland.
17 April 2008
Featuring: Roy Foster, Fran Brearton, Warwick Gould
Yeats and Mysticism
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and beliefs of the Irish Poet W B Yeats and explores how a passion for magic and mysticism served and stood alongside his poetry.
31 January 2002
Featuring: Roy Foster, Warwick Gould, Brenda Maddox
16th-century English dramatists and playwrights, 16th-century English poets, English Renaissance dramatists (4)
Marlowe
Melvyn Bragg discusses Christopher Marlowe; a forger, a brawler, a spy, but above all a playwright, a poet and the most celebrated writer of his generation.
7 July 2005
Featuring: Katherine Duncan-Jones, Jonathan Bate, Emma J. Smith
Shakespeare and Literary Criticism
Melvyn Bragg discusses the enduring popular and academic appeal of Shakespeare and examines whether literary criticism and the academic institution ruins the pleasure of reading.
4 March 1999
Featuring: Harold Bloom, Jacqueline Rose
Shakespeare's Life
Melvyn Bragg discusses what we know about the life of William Shakespeare, a tantalising conundrum that has exercised minds since the day the playwright died.
15 March 2001
Featuring: Katherine Duncan-Jones, John Sutherland, Grace Ioppolo
Shakespeare's Work
Melvyn Bragg discusses whether the work of William Shakespeare is 'not of an age but for all time' or increasingly irrelevant museum pieces embalmed in out of reach language.
11 May 2000
Featuring: Frank Kermode, Michael Bogdanov, Germaine Greer
British science fiction novels (3)
Frankenstein
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Mary Shelley's story of Victor Frankenstein and the creature he makes from cadavers and then rejects - only for the monster to take his revenge
16 May 2019
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Michael Rossington, Jane Thomas
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Orwell's dystopian novel where the state rewrites history, war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength - and Big Brother is watching you
15 September 2022
Featuring: David Dwan, Lisa Mullen, John Bowen
The Time Machine
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and anxieties in late Victorian London, explored by HG Wells in his story of time travel, evolution and a planet unfit for humans.
17 October 2019
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Amanda Rees, Simon James
Dystopian novels (3)
Animal Farm
4 Extra Debut. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss George Orwell's Animal Farm, which he struggled to publish in WW2 as the USSR was an ally. From 2016.
29 September 2016
Featuring: Steven Connor, Mary Vincent, Robert Colls
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Orwell's dystopian novel where the state rewrites history, war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength - and Big Brother is watching you
15 September 2022
Featuring: David Dwan, Lisa Mullen, John Bowen
The Time Machine
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and anxieties in late Victorian London, explored by HG Wells in his story of time travel, evolution and a planet unfit for humans.
17 October 2019
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Amanda Rees, Simon James
English novels (3)
Animal Farm
4 Extra Debut. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss George Orwell's Animal Farm, which he struggled to publish in WW2 as the USSR was an ally. From 2016.
29 September 2016
Featuring: Steven Connor, Mary Vincent, Robert Colls
Middlemarch
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss George Eliot's Study of Provincial Life, set before the Reform Act 1832 in a small, fictional town in the Midlands surrounded by farmland.
18 April 2018
Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Kathryn Hughes, John Bowen
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Orwell's dystopian novel where the state rewrites history, war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength - and Big Brother is watching you
15 September 2022
Featuring: David Dwan, Lisa Mullen, John Bowen
Novels set in London (3)
A Christmas Carol
From Bah Humbug to God Bless Us Every One: Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Charles Dickens' story of Scrooge's salvation by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet To Come.
16 December 2021
Featuring: Juliet John, Jon Mee, Dinah Birch
Mrs Dalloway
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs Dalloway, published in 1925.
3 July 2014
Featuring: Hermione Lee, Jane Goldman, Kathryn Simpson
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Orwell's dystopian novel where the state rewrites history, war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength - and Big Brother is watching you
15 September 2022
Featuring: David Dwan, Lisa Mullen, John Bowen
Light sources (3)
The Death of Stars
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how so much in the Universe, and much of our understanding of it, depends on changes in stars as they die after millions or billions of stable years
9 June 2022
Featuring: Martin Rees, Carolin Crawford, Mark Sullivan
The Life of Stars
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life cycle of stars. They are born among vast swirls of gas and dust and they die in stunning explosions.
27 Mar 2003
Featuring: Paul Murdin, Janna Levin, Phil Charles
The Sun
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the science of the sun, source of all our energy.
10 July 2014
Featuring: Carolin Crawford, Yvonne Elsworth, Louise Harra
18th-century German writers (3)
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Moses Mendelssohn
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of Moses Mendelssohn, one of the greatest thinkers of the German Enlightenment.
22 March 2012
Featuring: Christopher Clark, Abigail Green, Adam Sutcliffe
19th-century educators (3)
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
German idealism (3)
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
The Romantics
Melvyn Bragg discusses the ideals and legacy of Romanticism, a literary and artistic movement at the turn of the 19th century which gave rise to the great poetry of Wordsworth, Shelley and Keats.
12 October 2000
Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Rosemary Ashton, Nicholas Roe
German logicians (3)
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
German male essayists (3)
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
Walter Benjamin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable philosopher and critic whose ideas, developed in the 1930s, became highly influential after his death while escaping the Holocaust.
10 February 2022
Featuring: Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger
Historians of philosophy (3)
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Iris Murdoch
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the growing prominence of the philosophy of one of the most celebrated novelists of the 20th century, who developed her ideas in response to WWII.
21 October 2021
Featuring: Anil Gomes, Anne Rowe, Miles Leeson
Popper
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.
8 February 2007
Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright
Kantianism (3)
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.
26 May 2022
Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate
Kant's Categorical Imperative
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of Kant's best known ideas: 'Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law'.
21 September 2017
Featuring: Alison Hills, David S. Oderberg, John Callanan
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Philosophy and thought in the Dutch Republic (3)
Jan Amos Komenský
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Czech man who tried to use education to build a better understanding between the peoples of Europe who were otherwise divided by religious wars.
19 May 2022
Featuring: Vladimir Urbanek, Suzanna Ivanic, Howard Hotson
Spinoza
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Spinoza whose profound and complex ideas about God had him celebrated as an atheist in the 18th century.
3 May 2007
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham
The Mind/Body Problem
Melvyn Bragg discusses the history of thought about the mind/body problem in philosophy. Does the mind rule the body or the body rule the mind? And where does the mind reside?
13 January 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Julian Baggini, Sue James
18th-century French women writers (3)
Emilie du Châtelet
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 18th-century mathematical genius whose insights into Newton and Leibniz were part of the great advance in science in the Enlightenment.
4 February 2021
Featuring: Patricia Fara, David Wootton, Judith Zinsser
Germaine de Staël
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas, works and life of Germaine de Stael (1766-1817), a literary critic, author, opponent of Napoleon and developer of Romanticism.
16 November 2017
Featuring: Catriona Seth, Alison Finch, Katherine Astbury
Olympe de Gouges
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, ideas and works of the Frenchwoman who wrote The Declaration of the Rights of Woman in 1791 during the French Revolution
21 April 2022
Featuring: Catriona Seth, Katherine Astbury, Sanja Perovic
19th-century diarists (3)
Kierkegaard
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.
20 March 2008
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt
Polidori's The Vampyre
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the myths that gave rise to this novella from 1819 by Byron's physician, John Polidori, and the works such as Bram Stoker's Dracula it inspired.
07 April 2022
Featuring: Nick Groom, Samantha George, Martyn Rady
Thoreau and the American Idyll
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the American 19th century writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau
15 January 2009
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Tim Morris, Stephen Fender
Social concepts (3)
Charisma
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how Weber drew on the idea of charisma in religion to explain why people follow some leaders loyally rather than dutifully, for better or worse
17 March 2022
Featuring: Tom F. Wright, Linda Woodhead, David A. Bell
Freedom
Melvyn Bragg discusses what it is to be free, how freedom became such a powerful value and whether there is such a thing as natural freedom or if it is always culturally defined.
4 July 2002
Featuring: John Keane, Bernard Williams, Annabel Brett
Progress
Melvyn Bragg examines whether while mankind has grown in years and knowledge, it has also progressed in terms of happiness and a truer understanding of the human condition.
18 November 1999
Featuring: Anthony O'Hear, Adam Phillips
Religious terminology (3)
Charisma
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how Weber drew on the idea of charisma in religion to explain why people follow some leaders loyally rather than dutifully, for better or worse
17 March 2022
Featuring: Tom F. Wright, Linda Woodhead, David A. Bell
Miracles
Melvyn Bragg discusses the history of miracles, the subject of fierce theological debate, intense popular piety and serious medical study.
25 September 2008
Featuring: Martin Palmer, Janet Soskice, Justin Champion
Redemption
Melvyn Bragg discusses Redemption, crucial for Judeo-Christian thought but can it retain its value in a world without God?
13 March 2003
Featuring: Richard Harries, Janet Soskice, Stephen Mulhall
Russian atheists (3)
Chekhov
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the great Russian writer Anton Chekhov.
14 March 2013
Featuring: Catriona Kelly, Cynthia Marsh, Rosamund Bartlett
Lenin
Melvyn Bragg investigates what drove the Soviet leader Lenin, and enabled him to develop a model to export communism and build an original political system that remained intact for over seventy years.
16 March 2000
Featuring: Robert Service, Vitali Vitaliev
Peter Kropotkin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the Russian prince who became an anarchist and who argued that mutual aid was the key to evolution not survival of the fittest
24 February 2022
Featuring: Ruth Kinna, Lee Dugatkin, Simon Dixon
Anarchist writers (3)
Peter Kropotkin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the Russian prince who became an anarchist and who argued that mutual aid was the key to evolution not survival of the fittest
24 February 2022
Featuring: Ruth Kinna, Lee Dugatkin, Simon Dixon
Thoreau and the American Idyll
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the American 19th century writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau
15 January 2009
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Tim Morris, Stephen Fender
Tolstoy
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and times of the 19th century Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, whose novels such as War and Peace gave expression to the compelling moral and social questions of their day.
25 April 2002
Featuring: A. N. Wilson, Catriona Kelly, Sarah Hudspith
Anarcho-communists (3)
Camus
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Nobel Prize winning Algerian-French writer and existentialist philosopher Albert Camus.
3 January 2008
Featuring: Peter Dunwoodie, David Walker, Christina Howells
Peter Kropotkin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the Russian prince who became an anarchist and who argued that mutual aid was the key to evolution not survival of the fittest
24 February 2022
Featuring: Ruth Kinna, Lee Dugatkin, Simon Dixon
Sartre
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
7 October 2004
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells
Plays adapted into radio programs (3)
Hamlet
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the inspiration for Shakespeare's Hamlet, the play's context and meaning, and why it has fascinated audiences from its first performance.
28 December 2017
Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Carol Rutter, Sonia Massai
Romeo and Juliet
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poetry and power of Shakespeare's tragedy of two young lovers in Verona, their families divided by a bitter feud
17 February 2022
Featuring: Helen Hackett, Paul Prescott, Emma Smith
The Tempest
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss The Tempest, one of Shakespeare's last and richest plays.
14 November 2013
Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Erin Sullivan, Katherine Duncan-Jones
20th-century German non-fiction writers (3)
Hannah Arendt
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Hannah Arendt who examined totalitarianism and politics and, when covering the Eichmann trial, explored 'the banality of evil'.
2 February 2017
Featuring: Lyndsey Stonebridge, Frisbee Sheffield, Robert Eaglestone
Hitler in History
Melvyn Bragg examines the debate between various historiographical theories. How do Intentionalist, Structralist and Marxist views of history explain events in Nazi Germany?
5 October 2000
Featuring: Ian Kershaw, Niall Ferguson, Mary Fulbrook
Walter Benjamin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable philosopher and critic whose ideas, developed in the 1930s, became highly influential after his death while escaping the Holocaust.
10 February 2022
Featuring: Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger
Jewish socialists (3)
Kafka's The Trial
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Franz Kafka's novel The Trial.
27 November 2014
Featuring: Elizabeth Boa, Steve Connor, Ritchie Robertson
Rosa Luxemburg
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rosa Luxemburg, 'Red Rosa', a leading revolutionary and agitator in Poland and Germany until her arrest and murder in the Spartacus Revolt 1919.
13 April 2017
Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Mark Jones, Nadine Rossol
Walter Benjamin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable philosopher and critic whose ideas, developed in the 1930s, became highly influential after his death while escaping the Holocaust.
10 February 2022
Featuring: Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger
20th-century French women writers (3)
Colette
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the novels and life of one of the most remarkable writers of the last century, whose Claudine series was first published under her husband's name.
27 January 2022
Featuring: Diana Holmes, Michèle Roberts, Belinda Jack
Simone Weil
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil. Admired by Albert Camus and Iris Murdoch, she achieved a great deal in her short life.
15 November 2012
Featuring: Beatrice Han-Pile, Stephen Plant, David Levy
Simone de Beauvoir
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.
22 October 2015
Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd
Bisexual women (3)
Colette
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the novels and life of one of the most remarkable writers of the last century, whose Claudine series was first published under her husband's name.
27 January 2022
Featuring: Diana Holmes, Michèle Roberts, Belinda Jack
Frida Kahlo
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work, life and times of the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo.
9 July 2015
Featuring: Patience Schell, Valerie Fraser, Alan Knight
Simone de Beauvoir
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.
22 October 2015
Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd
British male poets (3)
Dickens
Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?
12 July 2001
Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen
Thomas Hardy's Poetry
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hardy's poems, which he prized far above the novels which made him famous and rich, and his ambition to be ranked alongside Shelley and Byron.
13 January 2022
Featuring: Mark Ford, Jane Thomas, Tim Armstrong
William Morris
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss some of the many aspects of William Morris: his activism, poetry and prose and his ideas on arts, crafts and work in an industrial world.
5 July 2018
Featuring: Ingrid Hanson, Marcus Waithe, Jane Thomas
Philosophical pessimists (3)
Jorge Luis Borges
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges.
4 January 2007
Featuring: Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn
Samuel Beckett
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the author of Waiting for Godot, who lived in Paris and wrote in French as he found that more difficult than writing in English
17 January 2019
Featuring: Steven Connor, Laura Salisbury, Mark Nixon
Thomas Hardy's Poetry
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hardy's poems, which he prized far above the novels which made him famous and rich, and his ambition to be ranked alongside Shelley and Byron.
13 January 2022
Featuring: Mark Ford, Jane Thomas, Tim Armstrong
Austrian people of Jewish descent (3)
Fritz Lang
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Fritz Lang, the director behind films such as Metropolis, Mabuse the Gambler and M in Weimar Germany and Fury and The Big Heat in Hollywood.
30 December 2021
Featuring: Stella Bruzzi, Joe McElhaney, Iris Luppa
Popper
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.
8 February 2007
Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright
Wittgenstein
Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.
4 December 2003
Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn
Ancient Syria (3)
The Hittites
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the empire based in the Land of Hatti during the Late Bronze Age, in modern Turkey, and the discoveries there over the last century.
23 December 2021
Featuring: Claudia Glatz, Ilgi Gercek, Christoph Bachhuber
The Phoenicians
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Phoenicians, the celebrated maritime traders of the ancient Mediterranean.
6 February 2014
Featuring: Mark Woolmer, Josephine Quinn, Cyprian Broodbank
The Sassanid Empire
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Sassanian Empire, a grand imperial rival to the Roman Empire.
13 December 2007
Featuring: Hugh N. Kennedy, Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis, James Howard-Johnston
Ancient Near East (3)
The Bronze Age Collapse
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Bronze Age collapse, the term used to describe what many perceive as sudden, chaotic change around 1200 BC, mainly in the eastern Mediterranean.
16 June 2016
Featuring: Linda Hulin, Simon Stoddart
The Hittites
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the empire based in the Land of Hatti during the Late Bronze Age, in modern Turkey, and the discoveries there over the last century.
23 December 2021
Featuring: Claudia Glatz, Ilgi Gercek, Christoph Bachhuber
The Phoenicians
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Phoenicians, the celebrated maritime traders of the ancient Mediterranean.
6 February 2014
Featuring: Mark Woolmer, Josephine Quinn, Cyprian Broodbank
History of the Mediterranean (3)
The Arab Conquests
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Arab conquests which transformed the Middle East, Persia, North Africa and Southern Europe by helping to spread the new religion of Islam.
26 June 2008
Featuring: Hugh N. Kennedy, Amira Bennison, Robert Hoyland
The Hittites
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the empire based in the Land of Hatti during the Late Bronze Age, in modern Turkey, and the discoveries there over the last century.
23 December 2021
Featuring: Claudia Glatz, Ilgi Gercek, Christoph Bachhuber
The Phoenicians
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Phoenicians, the celebrated maritime traders of the ancient Mediterranean.
6 February 2014
Featuring: Mark Woolmer, Josephine Quinn, Cyprian Broodbank
Ancient Greek epistemologists (3)
Heraclitus
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the ancient Greek thinker Heraclitus, immortalised by later scholars as the Weeping Philosopher.
8 December 2011
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Peter Adamson, James Warren
Plato's Gorgias
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock
25 November 2021
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh
Socrates
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.
27 September 2007
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett
Ancient Greek logicians (3)
Galen
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Roman physician and medical theorist Galen.
10 October 2013
Featuring: Vivian Nutton, Helen King, Caroline Petit
Plato's Gorgias
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock
25 November 2021
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh
Socrates
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.
27 September 2007
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett
Ancient Greek physicists (3)
Archimedes
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Greek mathematician Archimedes, brilliant with numbers and unexpectedly good at defensive siege warfare.
25 January 2007
Featuring: Jackie Stedall, Serafina Cuomo, George Phillips
Heraclitus
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the ancient Greek thinker Heraclitus, immortalised by later scholars as the Weeping Philosopher.
8 December 2011
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Peter Adamson, James Warren
Plato's Gorgias
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock
25 November 2021
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh
Attic Greek writers (3)
Plato's Gorgias
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock
25 November 2021
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh
Thucydides
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ancient Greek historian Thucydides and his work entitled The History of the Peloponnesian War.
29 January 2015
Featuring: Paul Cartledge, Katherine Harloe, Neville Morley
Xenophon
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the ancient Greek historian and soldier Xenophon.
26 May 2011
Featuring: Paul Cartledge, Edith Hall, Simon Goldhill
Epigrammatists (3)
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
Plato's Gorgias
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock
25 November 2021
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh
Greek social commentators (3)
Plato's Gorgias
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock
25 November 2021
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh
Socrates
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.
27 September 2007
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett
Xenophon
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the ancient Greek historian and soldier Xenophon.
26 May 2011
Featuring: Paul Cartledge, Edith Hall, Simon Goldhill
19th-century literature (3)
The Decadent Movement
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the influence of Baudelaire and Walter Pater on writers and artists in Britain in the 1890s, pursuing art for its own sake and not with moral aims.
18 November 2021
Featuring: Neil Sammells, Kate Hext, Alex Murray
The Romantics
Melvyn Bragg discusses the ideals and legacy of Romanticism, a literary and artistic movement at the turn of the 19th century which gave rise to the great poetry of Wordsworth, Shelley and Keats.
12 October 2000
Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Rosemary Ashton, Nicholas Roe
Victorian Realism
Melvyn Bragg discusses Victorian realism and its focus on the ordinariness of life which contained a complexity and depth previously unseen.
14 November 2002
Featuring: Philip Davis, A. N. Wilson, Dinah Birch
Modern art (3)
Modernist Utopias
Melvyn Bragg discusses the mad, bad world of modern utopias where babies are hatched from test tubes, where women live without men, where machines have taken over, and where the poor are exterminated.
10 March 2005
Featuring: John Carey, Steven Connor, Laura Marcus
The Avant Garde's Decline and Fall in the 20th Century
Melvyn Bragg examines the social and aesthetic impact of the Avant Garde and discusses whether it has failed in making painting relevant in the 20th century.
25 February 1999
Featuring: Eric Hobsbawm, Frances Morris
The Decadent Movement
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the influence of Baudelaire and Walter Pater on writers and artists in Britain in the 1890s, pursuing art for its own sake and not with moral aims.
18 November 2021
Featuring: Neil Sammells, Kate Hext, Alex Murray
18th-century German composers (3)
Frederick the Great
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Frederick II, king of Prussia from 1740 to 1786.
2 July 2015
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Katrin Kohl, Thomas Biskup
Ludwig van Beethoven
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rise of Beethoven, from Bonn to Vienna, where he became one of the great composers, despite his growing deafness.
21 December 2017
Featuring: Laura Tunbridge, John Deathridge, Erica Buurman
William and Caroline Herschel
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pioneering brother and sister who, between them, discovered Uranus, comets, double stars and infrared light at the end of the 18th century.
11 November 2021
Featuring: Monica Grady, Carolin Crawford, Jim Bennett
German classical composers (3)
Frederick the Great
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Frederick II, king of Prussia from 1740 to 1786.
2 July 2015
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Katrin Kohl, Thomas Biskup
Hildegard of Bingen
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the medieval mystic, composer and writer Hildegard of Bingen.
26 June 2014
Featuring: Miri Rubin, William Flynn, Almut Suerbaum
William and Caroline Herschel
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pioneering brother and sister who, between them, discovered Uranus, comets, double stars and infrared light at the end of the 18th century.
11 November 2021
Featuring: Monica Grady, Carolin Crawford, Jim Bennett
20th-century British non-fiction writers (3)
Iris Murdoch
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the growing prominence of the philosophy of one of the most celebrated novelists of the 20th century, who developed her ideas in response to WWII.
21 October 2021
Featuring: Anil Gomes, Anne Rowe, Miles Leeson
Popper
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.
8 February 2007
Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright
Wittgenstein
Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.
4 December 2003
Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn
20th-century English novelists (3)
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aldous Huxley's dystopian 1932 novel Brave New World and its vision of a future of test tube babies, free love and round-the-clock surveillance.
9 April 2009
Featuring: David Bradshaw, Daniel Pick, Michèle Barrett
Iris Murdoch
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the growing prominence of the philosophy of one of the most celebrated novelists of the 20th century, who developed her ideas in response to WWII.
21 October 2021
Featuring: Anil Gomes, Anne Rowe, Miles Leeson
Rudyard Kipling
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Rudyard Kipling, a writer sometimes described as the poet of empire.
16 October 2014
Featuring: Howard Booth, Daniel Karlin, Jan Montefiore
Alumni of Newnham College, Cambridge (3)
Dorothy Hodgkin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work, ideas and life of the woman who won the 1964 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her work on the structures of vitamin B12 and penicillin.
3 October 2019
Featuring: Georgina Ferry, Judith Howard, Patricia Fara
Iris Murdoch
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the growing prominence of the philosophy of one of the most celebrated novelists of the 20th century, who developed her ideas in response to WWII.
21 October 2021
Featuring: Anil Gomes, Anne Rowe, Miles Leeson
Rosalind Franklin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the achievements of the pioneering scientist Rosalind Franklin.
22 February 2018
Featuring: Patricia Fara, Jim Naismith, Judith Howard
English women dramatists and playwrights (3)
Aphra Behn
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Aphra Behn, known for her plays for the Restoration stage such as The Rover and for her novel Oroonoko.
12 October 2017
Featuring: Janet Todd, Ros Ballaster, Claire Bowditch
Fanny Burney
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the 18th-century writer Fanny Burney, also known as Frances D'Arblay and Frances Burney, best known for her novel Evelina.
23 April 2015
Featuring: Nicole Pohl, Judith Hawley, John Mullan
Iris Murdoch
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the growing prominence of the philosophy of one of the most celebrated novelists of the 20th century, who developed her ideas in response to WWII.
21 October 2021
Featuring: Anil Gomes, Anne Rowe, Miles Leeson
English women philosophers (3)
Harriet Martineau
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Harriet Martineau who wrote extensively in the C19th on a wide range of subjects including abolition, and is called the mother of sociology.
8 December 2016
Featuring: Valerie Sanders, Karen O'Brien, Ella Dzelzainis
Iris Murdoch
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the growing prominence of the philosophy of one of the most celebrated novelists of the 20th century, who developed her ideas in response to WWII.
21 October 2021
Featuring: Anil Gomes, Anne Rowe, Miles Leeson
Mary Wollstonecraft
Melvyn Bragg and guests John Mullan, Karen O'Brien and Barbara Taylor discuss the life and ideas of the pioneering British Enlightenment thinker Mary Wollstonecraft.
31 December 2009
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Mullan, Barbara Taylor
James Tait Black Memorial Prize recipients (3)
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aldous Huxley's dystopian 1932 novel Brave New World and its vision of a future of test tube babies, free love and round-the-clock surveillance.
9 April 2009
Featuring: David Bradshaw, Daniel Pick, Michèle Barrett
Iris Murdoch
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the growing prominence of the philosophy of one of the most celebrated novelists of the 20th century, who developed her ideas in response to WWII.
21 October 2021
Featuring: Anil Gomes, Anne Rowe, Miles Leeson
Siegfried Sassoon
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the war poet Siegfried Sassoon; a homosexual war hero who became a bitter opponent of the First World War and a devout Catholic.
7 June 2007
Featuring: Jean Moorcroft Wilson, Fran Brearton, Max Egremont
English LGBT poets (3)
Auden
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss WH Auden's life and poetry from Europe before WWII, reflecting on his travels to Spain, China and Germany and the rise of totalitarianism.
19 December 2019
Featuring: Mark Ford, Janet Montefiore, Jeremy Noel-Tod
Iris Murdoch
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the growing prominence of the philosophy of one of the most celebrated novelists of the 20th century, who developed her ideas in response to WWII.
21 October 2021
Featuring: Anil Gomes, Anne Rowe, Miles Leeson
Siegfried Sassoon
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the war poet Siegfried Sassoon; a homosexual war hero who became a bitter opponent of the First World War and a devout Catholic.
7 June 2007
Featuring: Jean Moorcroft Wilson, Fran Brearton, Max Egremont
Former countries in Europe (3)
Byzantium
Melvyn Bragg discusses the culture, history and legacy of the eastern Byzantine Empire, and examines why it has so often been sidelined and undermined by historians.
19 July 2001
Featuring: Charlotte Roueché, John Julius Norwich, Liz James
Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rise and fall of the largest republic in Europe, which for centuries elected its kings to rule alongside parliament and avoided religious wars.
14 October 2021
Featuring: Robert I. Frost, Katarzyna Kosior, Norman Davies
The Roman Republic
Melvyn Bragg discusses the rise and eventual downfall of the Roman Republic which survived for 500 years.
30 December 2004
Featuring: Greg Woolf, Catherine Steel, Tom Holland
Works published under a pseudonym (3)
Jane Eyre
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, first published in 1847 under the pseudonym Currer Bell.
18 June 2015
Featuring: Dinah Birch, Karen O'Brien, Sara Lyons
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Anne Bronte's story of the mysterious Helen Graham who seeks a new independent life as an artist after escaping her abusive, alcoholic husband.
30 September 2021
Featuring: Alexandra Lewis, Marianne Thormählen, John Bowen
Wuthering Heights
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Emily Bronte's story of Heathcliff and Cathy, of love, hatred, revenge and self-destruction across two generations in a remote moorland home.
28 September 2017
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Bowen, Alexandra Lewis
Epistolary novels (3)
Epistolary Literature
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 18th Century fashion for epistolary literature including Aphra Benn, Samuel Richardson and Jane Austen.
15 March 2007
Featuring: John Mullan, Karen O'Brien, Brean Hammond
Frankenstein
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Mary Shelley's story of Victor Frankenstein and the creature he makes from cadavers and then rejects - only for the monster to take his revenge
16 May 2019
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Michael Rossington, Jane Thomas
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Anne Bronte's story of the mysterious Helen Graham who seeks a new independent life as an artist after escaping her abusive, alcoholic husband.
30 September 2021
Featuring: Alexandra Lewis, Marianne Thormählen, John Bowen
Novels set in the 1820s (3)
Eugene Onegin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837), often described as his masterpiece, which tells the tragic story of Onegin, Lensky and Tatyana.
22 June 2017
Featuring: Andrew Kahn, Emily Finer, Simon Dixon
Middlemarch
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss George Eliot's Study of Provincial Life, set before the Reform Act 1832 in a small, fictional town in the Midlands surrounded by farmland.
18 April 2018
Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Kathryn Hughes, John Bowen
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Anne Bronte's story of the mysterious Helen Graham who seeks a new independent life as an artist after escaping her abusive, alcoholic husband.
30 September 2021
Featuring: Alexandra Lewis, Marianne Thormählen, John Bowen
5th-century BC historians (3)
Confucius
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosophy of Confucius, a body of ideas which, more than any other philosophy, has defined what it is to be Chinese.
1 November 2001
Featuring: Frances Wood, Tim Barrett, Tao Tao Liu
Herodotus
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Greek writer whose Histories aimed to 'preserve the great and marvellous deeds of Greeks and barbarians, especially why they fought each other'.
23 September 2021
Featuring: Tom Harrison, Esther Eidinow, Paul Cartledge
Thucydides
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ancient Greek historian Thucydides and his work entitled The History of the Peloponnesian War.
29 January 2015
Featuring: Paul Cartledge, Katherine Harloe, Neville Morley
Classical-era Greek historians (3)
Herodotus
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Greek writer whose Histories aimed to 'preserve the great and marvellous deeds of Greeks and barbarians, especially why they fought each other'.
23 September 2021
Featuring: Tom Harrison, Esther Eidinow, Paul Cartledge
Thucydides
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ancient Greek historian Thucydides and his work entitled The History of the Peloponnesian War.
29 January 2015
Featuring: Paul Cartledge, Katherine Harloe, Neville Morley
Xenophon
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the ancient Greek historian and soldier Xenophon.
26 May 2011
Featuring: Paul Cartledge, Edith Hall, Simon Goldhill
18th-century English non-fiction writers (3)
Edward Gibbon
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the writer of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, one of the most celebrated works of its kind.
17 June 2021
Featuring: David Womersley, Charlotte Roberts, Karen O’Brien
Mary Astell
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosopher Mary Astell (1666 – 1731) who has been described as "the first English feminist".
5 November 2020
Featuring: Hannah Dawson, Mark Goldie, Teresa Bejan
Pope
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the satirist Alexander Pope. One of the greatest poets of the English language, his brilliant satires have made him popular in our age but not in his own.
9 November 2006
Featuring: John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Valerie Rumbold
Alumni of Magdalen College, Oxford (3)
Edward Gibbon
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the writer of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, one of the most celebrated works of its kind.
17 June 2021
Featuring: David Womersley, Charlotte Roberts, Karen O’Brien
Lawrence of Arabia
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Lawrence of Arabia, the legend and its context, an idea drawn from over 1200 suggested by listeners this autumn
5 December 2019
Featuring: Hussein Omar, Catriona Pennell, Neil Faulkner
Oscar Wilde
Melvyn Bragg discusses Oscar Wilde, the Aesthetes and his literary legacy. Was Wilde a reactionary - the last of the romantics - or was he the midwife to modernism?
6 December 2001
Featuring: Valentine Cunningham, Regenia Gagnier, Neil Sammells
German nationalists (3)
Bismarck
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the original Iron Chancellor, Otto Von Bismarck, one of 19th Century Europe’s most influential statesmen and the founder of modern Germany.
22 March 2007
Featuring: Richard J Evans, Christopher Clark, Katharine Lerman
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Weber's The Protestant Ethic
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Max Weber's book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
27 March 2014
Featuring: Peter Ghosh, Sam Whimster, Linda Woodhead
Humor researchers (3)
Benjamin Franklin
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.
1 March 2012
Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara
Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce's groundbreaking 1916 novel about growing up in Catholic Ireland.
26 November 2009
Featuring: Roy Foster, Katherine Mullin, Jeri Johnson
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
Picaresque novels (3)
Journey to the West
Melvyn Bragg discusses the much loved Chinese novel from 1592, featuring Monkey, Tripitaka, Sandy and Pigsy, as they travel to India to bring back Buddhist texts.
20 May 2021
Featuring: Julia Lovell, Chiung-yun Evelyn Liu, Craig Clunas
Tristram Shandy
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Laurence Sterne's comic novel Tristram Shandy.
24 April 2014
Featuring: Judith Hawley, John Mullan, Mary Newbould
Voltaire's Candide
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Voltaire's satirical novel Candide, first published in 1759.
3 May 2012
Featuring: David Wootton, Nicholas Cronk, Caroline Warman
Civil wars in England (3)
The Glorious Revolution
Melvyn Bragg examines the Glorious Revolution of 1688 but were the events of 1688 really either Glorious or Revolutionary?
19 April 2001
Featuring: John Spurr, Rosemary Sweet, Scott Mandelbrote
The Second Barons' War
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the vicious war (1264-7) that followed Simon de Montfort's seizure of power from Henry III and his family while supporting new, broader parliaments.
6 May 2021
Featuring: David Carpenter, Louise Wilkinson, Sophie Thérèse Ambler
The Wars of the Roses
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 15th century wars between the royal Houses of Lancaster and York. Do they represent the breakdown of the feudal system or has the political instability been overstated?
18 May 2000
Featuring: Helen Castor, Colin Richmond, Stephen Gunn
1st-century BC writers (3)
Horace
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Horace, one of the greatest poets of his age, the origin of phrases such as carpe diem, nil desperandum and dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.
15 November 2018
Featuring: Emily Gowers, William Fitzgerald, Ellen O'Gorman
Julius Caesar
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and reputation of Julius Caesar, one of the most intriguing figures of Roman history.
2 October 2014
Featuring: Christopher Pelling, Catherine Steel, Maria Wyke
Ovid
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Roman poet whose influence is arguably greater than any poet of the classical age, besides Homer, even though his writing led to his exile.
29 April 2021
Featuring: Maria Wyke, Gail Trimble, Dunstan Lowe
Determinists (3)
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.
12 January 2017
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson
Pierre-Simon Laplace
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great French mathematician who tackled questions on the stability of the Solar System and planet rotation and devised the basis for metrication
8 April 2021
Featuring: Marcus du Sautoy, Timothy Gowers, Colva Roney-Dougal
Spinoza
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Spinoza whose profound and complex ideas about God had him celebrated as an atheist in the 18th century.
3 May 2007
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham
French physicists (3)
Blaise Pascal
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the French polymath Blaise Pascal.
19 September 2013
Featuring: David Wootton, Michael Moriarty, Michela Massimi
Emilie du Châtelet
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 18th-century mathematical genius whose insights into Newton and Leibniz were part of the great advance in science in the Enlightenment.
4 February 2021
Featuring: Patricia Fara, David Wootton, Judith Zinsser
Pierre-Simon Laplace
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great French mathematician who tackled questions on the stability of the Solar System and planet rotation and devised the basis for metrication
8 April 2021
Featuring: Marcus du Sautoy, Timothy Gowers, Colva Roney-Dougal
Theoretical physicists (3)
Maxwell
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and work of the often overlooked 19th century Scottish scientist, and his enormous contribution to the creation of the technological age in which we live.
2 October 2003
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Peter Harman, Joanna Haigh
Paul Dirac
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Bristolian theoretical physicist, ranked alongside Einstein by his peers, who won a Nobel for his work on quantum mechanics.
5 March 2020
Featuring: Graham Farmelo, Valerie Gibson, David Berman
Pierre-Simon Laplace
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great French mathematician who tackled questions on the stability of the Solar System and planet rotation and devised the basis for metrication
8 April 2021
Featuring: Marcus du Sautoy, Timothy Gowers, Colva Roney-Dougal
Wars involving Japan (3)
Russo-Japanese War
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Japan's unexpected victory over Russia in 1904-5 which gave Japan a new status in the world and pushed Russia into revolution.
1 April 2021
Featuring: Simon Dixon, Naoko Shimazu, Oleg Benesch
The Boxer Rebellion
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Boxer Rebellion, when the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists purged China of foreign influences in the summer of 1900.
19 March 2009
Featuring: Frances Wood, Rana Mitter, R. G. Tiedemann
The Second Sino-Japanese War
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Second Sino-Japanese War.
8 May 2014
Featuring: Rana Mitter, Barak Kushner, Tehyun Ma
Classical economists (3)
David Ricardo
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Ricardo's argument that Britain's economy was being held back by the interests of landlords and protectionism, and his call for free trade.
25 March 2021
Featuring: Matthew Watson, Helen Paul, Richard Whatmore
Harriet Martineau
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Harriet Martineau who wrote extensively in the C19th on a wide range of subjects including abolition, and is called the mother of sociology.
8 December 2016
Featuring: Valerie Sanders, Karen O'Brien, Ella Dzelzainis
Mill
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.
18 May 2006
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan
Plays set in ancient Greece (3)
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas behind Shakespeare's comedy with its intertwining plots of royal marriage, crossed lovers, quarreling fairies and rude mechanicals
18 April 2019
Featuring: Helen Hackett, Tom Healy, Alison Findlay
The Bacchae
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great tragedy by Euripides, where Dionysus takes revenge on Thebans who denied his divinity, their king torn to shreds by his mother.
18 March 2021
Featuring: Edith Hall, Emily Wilson, Rosie Wyles
The Oresteia
Melvyn Bragg discusses the ‘Oresteia’, the first of the Classical tragedies that come out of fifth century Athens. It is a tale of homecoming, murder, bloody vengeance and the establishment of Law.
29 December 2005
Featuring: Edith Hall, Simon Goldhill, Tom Healy
Extinction events (3)
The KT Boundary
Melvyn Bragg discusses the geological KT Boundary that points to a cataclysmic event in the history of the Earth; one that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs and the rise of the mammals.
23 June 2005
Featuring: Simon Kelley, Jane Francis, Mike Benton
The Late Devonian Extinction
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the disappearance of up to 70 per cent of species roughly 370 million years ago at the end of The Age of Fishes, and the range of possible causes.
11 March 2021
Featuring: Jessica Whiteside, David Bond, Mike Benton
The Permian-Triassic Boundary
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Permian-Triassic boundary and the greatest mass extinction the world has ever known.
28 June 2007
Featuring: Richard Corfield, Mike Benton, Jane Francis
British poems (3)
Aurora Leigh
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aurora Leigh, Elizabeth Barrett Browning's novel-poem published in 1856, three years before her death in Florence.
24 March 2016
Featuring: Margaret Reynolds, Daniel Karlin, Karen O'Brien
Tennyson's In Memoriam
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem In Memoriam.
30 June 2011
Featuring: Dinah Birch, Seamus Perry, Jane Wright
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Coleridge's poem of a grim voyage in which a sailor shoots an albatross and is forced to tell the story of his crime forever.
4 March 2021
Featuring: Sir Jonathan Bate, Tom Mole, Rosemary Ashton
2nd-century philosophers (3)
Galen
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Roman physician and medical theorist Galen.
10 October 2013
Featuring: Vivian Nutton, Helen King, Caroline Petit
Marcus Aurelius
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, meditations and reputation of this stoic and philosopher king, who Machiavelli called the last of the 'Five Good Emperors'.
25 February 2021
Featuring: Simon Goldhill, Angie Hobbs, Catharine Edwards
Ptolemy and Ancient Astronomy
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the last of the great Greek astronomers of antiquity, Ptolemy, and his influence on ancient and medieval astronomy.
17 November 2011
Featuring: Liba Taub, Jim Bennett, Charles Burnett
Deified Roman emperors (3)
Constantine the Great
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Constantine the Great, the Roman emperor who made Constantinople his capital rather than Rome and who legalised Christianity across the Empire.
5 October 2017
Featuring: Christopher Kelly, Lucy Grig, Greg Woolf
Marcus Aurelius
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, meditations and reputation of this stoic and philosopher king, who Machiavelli called the last of the 'Five Good Emperors'.
25 February 2021
Featuring: Simon Goldhill, Angie Hobbs, Catharine Edwards
The Augustan Age
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the political regime and cultural influence of the Roman Emperor Augustus.
11 June 2009
Featuring: Mary Beard, Catharine Edwards, Duncan Kennedy
Roman philhellenes (3)
Horace
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Horace, one of the greatest poets of his age, the origin of phrases such as carpe diem, nil desperandum and dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.
15 November 2018
Featuring: Emily Gowers, William Fitzgerald, Ellen O'Gorman
Marcus Aurelius
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, meditations and reputation of this stoic and philosopher king, who Machiavelli called the last of the 'Five Good Emperors'.
25 February 2021
Featuring: Simon Goldhill, Angie Hobbs, Catharine Edwards
Nero
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the reputation of Nero, popular with his subjects but vilified in his lifetime and after and associated with the Beast in the Book of Revelation.
25 April 2019
Featuring: Maria Wyke, Matthew Nicholls, Shushma Malik
Roman pharaohs (3)
Marcus Aurelius
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, meditations and reputation of this stoic and philosopher king, who Machiavelli called the last of the 'Five Good Emperors'.
25 February 2021
Featuring: Simon Goldhill, Angie Hobbs, Catharine Edwards
Nero
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the reputation of Nero, popular with his subjects but vilified in his lifetime and after and associated with the Beast in the Book of Revelation.
25 April 2019
Featuring: Maria Wyke, Matthew Nicholls, Shushma Malik
The Augustan Age
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the political regime and cultural influence of the Roman Emperor Augustus.
11 June 2009
Featuring: Mary Beard, Catharine Edwards, Duncan Kennedy
Contributors to the Encyclopédie (1751–1772) (3)
Emilie du Châtelet
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 18th-century mathematical genius whose insights into Newton and Leibniz were part of the great advance in science in the Enlightenment.
4 February 2021
Featuring: Patricia Fara, David Wootton, Judith Zinsser
Montesquieu
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of the French political philosopher (1689-1755) whose work on liberty and republicanism, banned at home, influenced the US constitution.
14 June 2018
Featuring: Richard Bourke, Rachel Hammersley, Richard Whatmore
Rousseau on Education
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rousseau's ideas on how to educate children so they retain their natural selves and are not corrupted by society.
10 October 2019
Featuring: Richard Whatmore, Caroline Warman, Denis McManus
Northumbrian saints (3)
Saint Cuthbert
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life of the Northumbrian monk, priest and hermit who lived on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne and became one of England's most revered saints.
28 January 2021
Featuring: Jane Hawkes, Sarah Foot, John Hines
St Hilda
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss St Hilda, who led a large and influential network of monasteries in 7th century Britain.
5 April 2007
Featuring: John Blair, Rosemary Cramp, Sarah Foot
The Venerable Bede
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Venerable Bede, who revolutionised history and scholarship, and became adopted by Rome as the last of the founding fathers of Christian religion.
25 November 2004
Featuring: Richard Gameson, Sarah Foot, Michelle Brown
Miracle workers (3)
Pythagoras
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and influence of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans.
10 December 2009
Featuring: Ian Stewart, Serafina Cuomo, John O'Connor
Saint Cuthbert
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life of the Northumbrian monk, priest and hermit who lived on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne and became one of England's most revered saints.
28 January 2021
Featuring: Jane Hawkes, Sarah Foot, John Hines
The Buddha
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life of Siddhartha Gautama, the originator of Buddhism, and examines why his teachings have now become one of the fastest growing religions of the Western world.
14 March 2002
Featuring: Peter Harvey, Kate Crosby, Mahinda Deegalle
Metafictional novels (3)
Don Quixote
Melvyn Bragg discusses the importance, originality and enduring appeal of Cervantes’ classic 17th century Spanish novel Don Quixote, a cornerstone of Western literature.
16 March 2006
Featuring: Barry Ife, Edwin Williamson, Jane Whetnall
Great Gatsby
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the great American novels of the 20th Century, where inexplicably rich Jay Gatsby aims to win Daisy Buchanan from her millionaire husband.
14 January 2021
Featuring: Sarah Churchwell, Philip McGowan, William Blazek
Tristram Shandy
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Laurence Sterne's comic novel Tristram Shandy.
24 April 2014
Featuring: Judith Hawley, John Mullan, Mary Newbould
Astronomical events (3)
Eclipses
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the progress in our understanding of eclipses from the ancient world onwards and how their predictability illuminates historical records and myths.
31 December 2020
Featuring: Carolin Crawford, Frank Close, Lucie Green
The Life of Stars
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life cycle of stars. They are born among vast swirls of gas and dust and they die in stunning explosions.
27 Mar 2003
Featuring: Paul Murdin, Janna Levin, Phil Charles
The Universe's Origins
Melvyn Bragg examines the way thinking about the origins of the universe changed in the 20th century. Are we any closer to knowing whether other worlds exist and how our planet came into being?
20 May 1999
Featuring: Martin Rees, Paul Davies
Vandalized works of art (3)
Chinese Cultural Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the decade of upheaval in China under Mao's revolt within his own party, led at first by the Red Guards, from 1966 until his death in 1976
17 December 2020
Featuring: Rana Mitter, Sun Peidong, Julia Lovell
Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Eugene Delacroix's painting Liberty Leading the People, his celebrated depiction of the events of the 1830 July Revolution.
20 October 2011
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Tamar Garb, Simon Lee
Picasso's Guernica
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Pablo Picasso's Guernica, which he painted in 1937 soon after the bombing of that Basque town in the Spanish Civil War, and its wider context.
2 November 2017
Featuring: Mary Vincent, Gijs van Hensbergen, Dacia Viejo Rose
Alumni of Christ Church, Oxford (3)
Auden
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss WH Auden's life and poetry from Europe before WWII, reflecting on his travels to Spain, China and Germany and the rise of totalitarianism.
19 December 2019
Featuring: Mark Ford, Janet Montefiore, Jeremy Noel-Tod
John Ruskin
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and work of John Ruskin, art and social critic, and one of the most influential figures of the Victorian era.
31 March 2005
Featuring: Dinah Birch, Keith Hanley, Stefan Collini
John Wesley and Methodism
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the difference John Wesley made during the Christian Revival of the 18th Century, developing Methodism into a major movement around the world
10 December 2020
Featuring: Stephen Plant, Eryn White, William Gibson
English diarists (3)
Fanny Burney
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the 18th-century writer Fanny Burney, also known as Frances D'Arblay and Frances Burney, best known for her novel Evelina.
23 April 2015
Featuring: Nicole Pohl, Judith Hawley, John Mullan
John Wesley and Methodism
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the difference John Wesley made during the Christian Revival of the 18th Century, developing Methodism into a major movement around the world
10 December 2020
Featuring: Stephen Plant, Eryn White, William Gibson
Siegfried Sassoon
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the war poet Siegfried Sassoon; a homosexual war hero who became a bitter opponent of the First World War and a devout Catholic.
7 June 2007
Featuring: Jean Moorcroft Wilson, Fran Brearton, Max Egremont
German–English translators (3)
Edith Wharton
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Wharton's novels, which explore the world of the privileged in America's Gilded Age, in which she lived, written in hindsight and with little mercy.
4 October 2018
Featuring: Hermione Lee, Bridget Bennett, Laura Rattray
John Wesley and Methodism
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the difference John Wesley made during the Christian Revival of the 18th Century, developing Methodism into a major movement around the world
10 December 2020
Featuring: Stephen Plant, Eryn White, William Gibson
Mary Wollstonecraft
Melvyn Bragg and guests John Mullan, Karen O'Brien and Barbara Taylor discuss the life and ideas of the pioneering British Enlightenment thinker Mary Wollstonecraft.
31 December 2009
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Mullan, Barbara Taylor
20th-century pseudonymous writers (3)
Anna Akhmatova
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poetry of Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966) whose work was banned under Stalin and who lived under constant threat of the gulags.
18 January 2018
Featuring: Katharine Hodgson, Alexandra Harrington, Michael Basker
Fernando Pessoa
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the works and life of one of Portugal's greatest poets, who wrote in his own name and in those of several rounded characters he created.
3 December 2020
Featuring: Cláudia Pazos-Alonso, Juliet Perkins, Paulo de Medeiros
Lenin
Melvyn Bragg investigates what drove the Soviet leader Lenin, and enabled him to develop a model to export communism and build an original political system that remained intact for over seventy years.
16 March 2000
Featuring: Robert Service, Vitali Vitaliev
Artist authors (3)
Albrecht Dürer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Dürer, the creator of some of the most memorable images in the late Renaissance from his woodcut of a rhinoceros to his stunning self portraits.
12 November 2020
Featuring: Susan Foister, Giulia Bartrum, Ulinka Rublack
Rabindranath Tagore
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore, winner of the 1913 Nobel Prize for Literature.
7 May 2015
Featuring: Chandrika Kaul, Bashabi Fraser, John Stevens
William Morris
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss some of the many aspects of William Morris: his activism, poetry and prose and his ideas on arts, crafts and work in an industrial world.
5 July 2018
Featuring: Ingrid Hanson, Marcus Waithe, Jane Thomas
18th-century British philosophers (3)
David Hume
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.
6 October 2011
Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris
Mary Astell
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosopher Mary Astell (1666 – 1731) who has been described as "the first English feminist".
5 November 2020
Featuring: Hannah Dawson, Mark Goldie, Teresa Bejan
Mary Wollstonecraft
Melvyn Bragg and guests John Mullan, Karen O'Brien and Barbara Taylor discuss the life and ideas of the pioneering British Enlightenment thinker Mary Wollstonecraft.
31 December 2009
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Mullan, Barbara Taylor
English women activists (3)
Annie Besant
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life of 19th-century writer and campaigner Annie Besant.
21 June 2012
Featuring: Lawrence Goldman, David Stack, Yasmin Khan
Mary Astell
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosopher Mary Astell (1666 – 1731) who has been described as "the first English feminist".
5 November 2020
Featuring: Hannah Dawson, Mark Goldie, Teresa Bejan
Octavia Hill
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Victorian reformer Octavia Hill, pioneer of social housing and campaigner for public open spaces.
7 April 2011
Featuring: Dinah Birch, Lawrence Goldman, Gillian Darley
18th-century pseudonymous writers (3)
Benjamin Franklin
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.
1 March 2012
Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara
Mary Astell
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosopher Mary Astell (1666 – 1731) who has been described as "the first English feminist".
5 November 2020
Featuring: Hannah Dawson, Mark Goldie, Teresa Bejan
Swift's A Modest Proposal
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jonathan Swift's satirical 1729 pamphlet A Modest Proposal, which reveals much about attitudes to the Irish and the poor in 18th-Century Britain.
29 January 2009
Featuring: John Mullan, Judith Hawley, Ian McBride
Pseudonymous women writers (3)
Anna Akhmatova
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poetry of Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966) whose work was banned under Stalin and who lived under constant threat of the gulags.
18 January 2018
Featuring: Katharine Hodgson, Alexandra Harrington, Michael Basker
George Sand
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work and life of Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin who in C19th France wrote many extremely successful novels, under the name George Sand
6 February 2020
Featuring: Belinda Jack, Angela Ryan, Nigel Harkness
Mary Astell
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosopher Mary Astell (1666 – 1731) who has been described as "the first English feminist".
5 November 2020
Featuring: Hannah Dawson, Mark Goldie, Teresa Bejan
Nobility from Vienna (3)
Maria Theresa
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the reign of the Empress who upended the European order while strengthening Austria through reforms, alliances and strategic marriages.
22 October 2020
Featuring: Catriona Seth, Martyn Rady, Thomas Biskup
Marie Antoinette
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Austrian princess who, while still a child, married the future Louis XVI of France only to face hostility and death under the French Revolution.
8 November 2018
Featuring: Catriona Seth, Katherine Astbury, David McCallam
Rudolf II
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the coterie of brilliant thinkers gathered by Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II at his court in Prague.
31 January 2008
Featuring: Peter Forshaw, Howard Hotson, Adam Mosley
20th-century British scientists (3)
Alan Turing
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and life of the founder of computer science - whose work helped crack enemy codes in WW2 - and his exploration of artificial intelligence.
15 October 2020
Featuring: Leslie Ann Goldberg, Simon Schaffer, Andrew Hodges
Rutherford
Melvyn Bragg discusses Ernest Rutherford. He is seen as the father of nuclear science, a great charismatic figure who mapped the landscape of the sub-atomic world.
19 February 2004
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Jim Al-Khalili, Patricia Fara
The Needham Question
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Needham Question, which asks why China’s medieval technological advancement was overtaken by that of a relative backwater called Europe.
19 October 2006
Featuring: Chris Cullen, Tim Barrett, Frances Wood
English atheists (3)
Alan Turing
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and life of the founder of computer science - whose work helped crack enemy codes in WW2 - and his exploration of artificial intelligence.
15 October 2020
Featuring: Leslie Ann Goldberg, Simon Schaffer, Andrew Hodges
Harriet Martineau
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Harriet Martineau who wrote extensively in the C19th on a wide range of subjects including abolition, and is called the mother of sociology.
8 December 2016
Featuring: Valerie Sanders, Karen O'Brien, Ella Dzelzainis
William Morris
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss some of the many aspects of William Morris: his activism, poetry and prose and his ideas on arts, crafts and work in an industrial world.
5 July 2018
Featuring: Ingrid Hanson, Marcus Waithe, Jane Thomas
English logicians (3)
Alan Turing
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and life of the founder of computer science - whose work helped crack enemy codes in WW2 - and his exploration of artificial intelligence.
15 October 2020
Featuring: Leslie Ann Goldberg, Simon Schaffer, Andrew Hodges
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Mill
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.
18 May 2006
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan
English people of Irish descent (3)
Alan Turing
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and life of the founder of computer science - whose work helped crack enemy codes in WW2 - and his exploration of artificial intelligence.
15 October 2020
Featuring: Leslie Ann Goldberg, Simon Schaffer, Andrew Hodges
Annie Besant
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life of 19th-century writer and campaigner Annie Besant.
21 June 2012
Featuring: Lawrence Goldman, David Stack, Yasmin Khan
Edmund Burke
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke, whose views on revolution in America and France were hugely influential.
3 June 2010
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Richard Bourke, John Keane
LGBT philosophers (3)
Alan Turing
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and life of the founder of computer science - whose work helped crack enemy codes in WW2 - and his exploration of artificial intelligence.
15 October 2020
Featuring: Leslie Ann Goldberg, Simon Schaffer, Andrew Hodges
Simone de Beauvoir
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.
22 October 2015
Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd
Wittgenstein
Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.
4 December 2003
Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn
5th-century BC Athenians (3)
Pericles
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and influence of the most powerful statesman in the new democracy of Athens, flourishing between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars.
17 September 2020
Featuring: Edith Hall, Paul Cartledge, Peter Liddel
Socrates
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.
27 September 2007
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett
Thucydides
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ancient Greek historian Thucydides and his work entitled The History of the Peloponnesian War.
29 January 2015
Featuring: Paul Cartledge, Katherine Harloe, Neville Morley
Ancient Athenian generals (3)
Pericles
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and influence of the most powerful statesman in the new democracy of Athens, flourishing between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars.
17 September 2020
Featuring: Edith Hall, Paul Cartledge, Peter Liddel
Thucydides
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ancient Greek historian Thucydides and his work entitled The History of the Peloponnesian War.
29 January 2015
Featuring: Paul Cartledge, Katherine Harloe, Neville Morley
Xenophon
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the ancient Greek historian and soldier Xenophon.
26 May 2011
Featuring: Paul Cartledge, Edith Hall, Simon Goldhill
University of Göttingen faculty (3)
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Gauss, 'prince of mathematicians', including those on number theory, geometry, probability theory, astronomy and electromagnetism.
30 November 2017
Featuring: Marcus du Sautoy, Colva Roney-Dougal, Nick Evans
Emmy Noether
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and achievements of one of the great 20th-century mathematicians.
24 January 2019
Featuring: Colva Roney-Dougal, David Berman, Elizabeth Mansfield
Paul Dirac
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Bristolian theoretical physicist, ranked alongside Einstein by his peers, who won a Nobel for his work on quantum mechanics.
5 March 2020
Featuring: Graham Farmelo, Valerie Gibson, David Berman
History of indigenous peoples of the Americas (3)
The Inca
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the South American people who dominated from the Andes to the Pacific coast until the arrival of the Spanish Conquistadors.
13 June 2019
Featuring: Frank Meddens, Helen Cowie, Bill Sillar
The War of 1812
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the War of 1812, the conflict between America and Great Britain which is sometimes referred to as the second American War of Independence.
31 January 2013
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Lawrence Goldman, Frank Cogliano
Valladolid Debate
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the influential debate in 1550 over whether it was right or not to enslave the people who lived on Spain's newly conquered land in the Americas.
20 February 2020
Featuring: Caroline Dodds Pennock, John Edwards, Julia McClure
19th-century letter writers (3)
Dickens
Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?
12 July 2001
Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen
George Sand
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work and life of Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin who in C19th France wrote many extremely successful novels, under the name George Sand
6 February 2020
Featuring: Belinda Jack, Angela Ryan, Nigel Harkness
Germaine de Staël
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas, works and life of Germaine de Stael (1766-1817), a literary critic, author, opponent of Napoleon and developer of Romanticism.
16 November 2017
Featuring: Catriona Seth, Alison Finch, Katherine Astbury
Christian hagiographers (3)
Alcuin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the cleric, educator and poet from York who put learning for its own sake at the heart of the Carolingian Renaissance
30 January 2020
Featuring: Joanna Story, Andy Orchard, Mary Garrison
Gerald of Wales
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the medieval scholar Gerald of Wales, the author of colourful and influential works about his journeys around Ireland and Wales.
4 October 2012
Featuring: Henrietta Leyser, Michelle Brown, Huw Pryce
The Venerable Bede
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Venerable Bede, who revolutionised history and scholarship, and became adopted by Rome as the last of the founding fathers of Christian religion.
25 November 2004
Featuring: Richard Gameson, Sarah Foot, Michelle Brown
Ancient LGBT people (3)
Alexander the Great
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and legacy of Alexander the Great, king of Macedon and conqueror of the Persian Empire.
1 October 2015
Featuring: Paul Cartledge, Diana Spencer, Rachel Mairs
Catullus
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poetry of Catullus - some of the greatest verse of his time, and some of the most scurrilous - and his influence on Roman and later poetry
11 January 2020
Featuring: Gail Trimble, Simon Smith, Maria Wyke
Sappho
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Greek poet Sappho, one of antiquity's greatest exponents of lyric poetry.
9 April 2015
Featuring: Edith Hall, Margaret Reynolds, Dirk Obbink
20th-century English poets (3)
Auden
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss WH Auden's life and poetry from Europe before WWII, reflecting on his travels to Spain, China and Germany and the rise of totalitarianism.
19 December 2019
Featuring: Mark Ford, Janet Montefiore, Jeremy Noel-Tod
Rudyard Kipling
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Rudyard Kipling, a writer sometimes described as the poet of empire.
16 October 2014
Featuring: Howard Booth, Daniel Karlin, Jan Montefiore
Siegfried Sassoon
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the war poet Siegfried Sassoon; a homosexual war hero who became a bitter opponent of the First World War and a devout Catholic.
7 June 2007
Featuring: Jean Moorcroft Wilson, Fran Brearton, Max Egremont
English literary critics (3)
Auden
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss WH Auden's life and poetry from Europe before WWII, reflecting on his travels to Spain, China and Germany and the rise of totalitarianism.
19 December 2019
Featuring: Mark Ford, Janet Montefiore, Jeremy Noel-Tod
Johnson
Melvyn Bragg discusses Samuel Johnson, a giant of 18th century literature, language and letters, and perhaps the most quotable Englishman to have ever lifted a pen.
27 October 2005
Featuring: John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Judith Hawley
William Hazlitt
Melvyn Bragg and guests Jonathan Bate, Uttara Natarajan and AC Grayling discuss the life and works of William Hazlitt.
8 April 2010
Featuring: Jonathan Bate, A. C. Grayling, Uttara Natarajan
Formalist poets (3)
Auden
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss WH Auden's life and poetry from Europe before WWII, reflecting on his travels to Spain, China and Germany and the rise of totalitarianism.
19 December 2019
Featuring: Mark Ford, Janet Montefiore, Jeremy Noel-Tod
Yeats and Irish Politics
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poet W.B. Yeats and Irish politics from the suspension of home rule to the division of Ireland.
17 April 2008
Featuring: Roy Foster, Fran Brearton, Warwick Gould
Yeats and Mysticism
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and beliefs of the Irish Poet W B Yeats and explores how a passion for magic and mysticism served and stood alongside his poetry.
31 January 2002
Featuring: Roy Foster, Warwick Gould, Brenda Maddox
LGBT dramatists and playwrights (3)
Auden
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss WH Auden's life and poetry from Europe before WWII, reflecting on his travels to Spain, China and Germany and the rise of totalitarianism.
19 December 2019
Featuring: Mark Ford, Janet Montefiore, Jeremy Noel-Tod
Federico Garcia Lorca
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of Federico Garcia Lorca, author of Blood Wedding, Yerma and The House of Bernarda Alba, executed by Franco's forces, his body unrecovered.
4 July 2019
Featuring: Maria Delgado, Federico Bonaddio, Sarah Wright
Oscar Wilde
Melvyn Bragg discusses Oscar Wilde, the Aesthetes and his literary legacy. Was Wilde a reactionary - the last of the romantics - or was he the midwife to modernism?
6 December 2001
Featuring: Valentine Cunningham, Regenia Gagnier, Neil Sammells
Chevaliers of the Légion d'honneur (3)
Edith Wharton
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Wharton's novels, which explore the world of the privileged in America's Gilded Age, in which she lived, written in hindsight and with little mercy.
4 October 2018
Featuring: Hermione Lee, Bridget Bennett, Laura Rattray
Lawrence of Arabia
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Lawrence of Arabia, the legend and its context, an idea drawn from over 1200 suggested by listeners this autumn
5 December 2019
Featuring: Hussein Omar, Catriona Pennell, Neil Faulkner
Tocqueville: Democracy in America
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alexis de Tocqueville and his study of the American democratic system, written as an example to France of how democracy might develop there.
22 March 2018
Featuring: Robert Gildea, Susan-Mary Grant, Jeremy Jennings
Translators of Homer (3)
Lawrence of Arabia
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Lawrence of Arabia, the legend and its context, an idea drawn from over 1200 suggested by listeners this autumn
5 December 2019
Featuring: Hussein Omar, Catriona Pennell, Neil Faulkner
Pope
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the satirist Alexander Pope. One of the greatest poets of the English language, his brilliant satires have made him popular in our age but not in his own.
9 November 2006
Featuring: John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Valerie Rumbold
William Morris
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss some of the many aspects of William Morris: his activism, poetry and prose and his ideas on arts, crafts and work in an industrial world.
5 July 2018
Featuring: Ingrid Hanson, Marcus Waithe, Jane Thomas
Autobiographers (3)
Al-Ghazali
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Islamic scholar Al-Ghazali, one of the most significant and influential philosophers of the Middle Ages.
19 March 2015
Featuring: Peter Adamson, Carole Hillenbrand, Robert Gleave
Ibn Khaldun
Melvyn Bragg and guests Robert Hoyland, Robert Irwin and Hugh Kennedy discuss the life and ideas of the 14th-century Arab philosopher of history Ibn Khaldun.
4 February 2010
Featuring: Robert Hoyland, Robert Graham Irwin, Hugh N. Kennedy
Rousseau on Education
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rousseau's ideas on how to educate children so they retain their natural selves and are not corrupted by society.
10 October 2019
Featuring: Richard Whatmore, Caroline Warman, Denis McManus
Nobel laureates in Chemistry (3)
Dorothy Hodgkin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work, ideas and life of the woman who won the 1964 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her work on the structures of vitamin B12 and penicillin.
3 October 2019
Featuring: Georgina Ferry, Judith Howard, Patricia Fara
Rutherford
Melvyn Bragg discusses Ernest Rutherford. He is seen as the father of nuclear science, a great charismatic figure who mapped the landscape of the sub-atomic world.
19 February 2004
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Jim Al-Khalili, Patricia Fara
The Curies
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the scientific achievements of the Curie family, Marie and Pierre and their daughter Irene Joliot-Curie, all three of whom won Nobel Prizes.
26 March 2015
Featuring: Patricia Fara, Robert Fox, Steven T Bramwell
20th-century male writers (3)
Bergson and Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.
9 May 2019
Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair
Federico Garcia Lorca
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of Federico Garcia Lorca, author of Blood Wedding, Yerma and The House of Bernarda Alba, executed by Franco's forces, his body unrecovered.
4 July 2019
Featuring: Maria Delgado, Federico Bonaddio, Sarah Wright
Siegfried Sassoon
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the war poet Siegfried Sassoon; a homosexual war hero who became a bitter opponent of the First World War and a devout Catholic.
7 June 2007
Featuring: Jean Moorcroft Wilson, Fran Brearton, Max Egremont
LGBT Roman Catholics (3)
Federico Garcia Lorca
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of Federico Garcia Lorca, author of Blood Wedding, Yerma and The House of Bernarda Alba, executed by Franco's forces, his body unrecovered.
4 July 2019
Featuring: Maria Delgado, Federico Bonaddio, Sarah Wright
Oscar Wilde
Melvyn Bragg discusses Oscar Wilde, the Aesthetes and his literary legacy. Was Wilde a reactionary - the last of the romantics - or was he the midwife to modernism?
6 December 2001
Featuring: Valentine Cunningham, Regenia Gagnier, Neil Sammells
Siegfried Sassoon
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the war poet Siegfried Sassoon; a homosexual war hero who became a bitter opponent of the First World War and a devout Catholic.
7 June 2007
Featuring: Jean Moorcroft Wilson, Fran Brearton, Max Egremont
17th-century Christian mystics (3)
Blaise Pascal
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the French polymath Blaise Pascal.
19 September 2013
Featuring: David Wootton, Michael Moriarty, Michela Massimi
George Fox and the Quakers
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the foundation of the Religious Society of Friends, otherwise known as the Quakers, in the 17th century.
5 April 2012
Featuring: Justin Champion, John Coffey, Kate Peters
Sir Thomas Browne
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, ideas and language of Browne (1605-82), a doctor sharing his personal views on science, history and religion at a time of great change
6 June 2019
Featuring: Claire Preston, Jessica Wolfe, Kevin Killeen
American slave owners (3)
Benjamin Franklin
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.
1 March 2012
Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara
President Ulysses S Grant
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Grant's role in rebuilding America in the decade after the Civil War and his impact on African-Americans and Native Americans.
30 May 2019
Featuring: Erik Mathisen, Susan-Mary Grant, Robert Cook
Washington and the American Revolution
Melvyn Bragg discusses the first President of the United States, George Washington, and the people and ideas that saw the American Revolution overthrow British rule in 1775.
24 June 2004
Featuring: Carol Berkin, Simon Middleton, Colin Bonwick
Congressional Gold Medal recipients (3)
President Ulysses S Grant
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Grant's role in rebuilding America in the decade after the Civil War and his impact on African-Americans and Native Americans.
30 May 2019
Featuring: Erik Mathisen, Susan-Mary Grant, Robert Cook
Thomas Edison
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of Thomas Edison, one of the great inventors and cultural figures of modern America.
9 December 2010
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Kathleen Burk, Iwan Morus
Washington and the American Revolution
Melvyn Bragg discusses the first President of the United States, George Washington, and the people and ideas that saw the American Revolution overthrow British rule in 1775.
24 June 2004
Featuring: Carol Berkin, Simon Middleton, Colin Bonwick
Gases (3)
Kinetic Theory
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the growth of ideas about gas pressure, from Newton's theory that static particles push against each other to Maxwell and Boltzmann's moving atoms.
23 May 2019
Featuring: Steven Bramwell, Isobel Falconer, Ted Forgan
Plasma
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss plasma. First observed in 1879, plasma is the most abundant matter in the universe, far more than solid, liquid or gas.
13 October 2016
Featuring: Justin Wark, Kate Lancaster, Bill Graham
The Vacuum of Space
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Vacuum of Space, from the innards of the atom to the outer reaches of space.
30 April 2009
Featuring: Frank Close, Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Ruth Gregory
British Gothic novels (3)
Frankenstein
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Mary Shelley's story of Victor Frankenstein and the creature he makes from cadavers and then rejects - only for the monster to take his revenge
16 May 2019
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Michael Rossington, Jane Thomas
Jane Eyre
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, first published in 1847 under the pseudonym Currer Bell.
18 June 2015
Featuring: Dinah Birch, Karen O'Brien, Sara Lyons
Wuthering Heights
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Emily Bronte's story of Heathcliff and Cathy, of love, hatred, revenge and self-destruction across two generations in a remote moorland home.
28 September 2017
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Bowen, Alexandra Lewis
Novels about revenge (3)
Frankenstein
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Mary Shelley's story of Victor Frankenstein and the creature he makes from cadavers and then rejects - only for the monster to take his revenge
16 May 2019
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Michael Rossington, Jane Thomas
Moby Dick
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Moby-Dick (1851) by Herman Melville, the story of Ahab and the white whale, the most popular of around 1,000 ideas that listeners submitted.
7 December 2017
Featuring: Bridget Bennett, Katie McGettigan, Graham Thompson
Wuthering Heights
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Emily Bronte's story of Heathcliff and Cathy, of love, hatred, revenge and self-destruction across two generations in a remote moorland home.
28 September 2017
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Bowen, Alexandra Lewis
19th-century French male writers (3)
Bergson and Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.
9 May 2019
Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair
Lamarck and Natural Selection
Melvyn Bragg discusses Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, the 18th century French scientist, and his theory of Natural Selection. Who was he and how far did he pave the way for Darwin?
26 December 2003
Featuring: Sandy Knapp, Steve Jones, Simon Conway Morris
Tocqueville: Democracy in America
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alexis de Tocqueville and his study of the American democratic system, written as an example to France of how democracy might develop there.
22 March 2018
Featuring: Robert Gildea, Susan-Mary Grant, Jeremy Jennings
19th-century French philosophers (3)
Bergson and Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.
9 May 2019
Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair
Proust
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.
17 April 2003
Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser
Tocqueville: Democracy in America
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alexis de Tocqueville and his study of the American democratic system, written as an example to France of how democracy might develop there.
22 March 2018
Featuring: Robert Gildea, Susan-Mary Grant, Jeremy Jennings
20th-century French male writers (3)
Bergson and Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.
9 May 2019
Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair
Camus
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Nobel Prize winning Algerian-French writer and existentialist philosopher Albert Camus.
3 January 2008
Featuring: Peter Dunwoodie, David Walker, Christina Howells
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
23 May 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene
Action theorists (3)
Bergson and Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.
9 May 2019
Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair
David Hume
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.
6 October 2011
Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris
Montaigne
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Michel de Montaigne. Best known for his influential Essays, Montaigne is regarded as the father of modern sceptical thought.
25 April 2013
Featuring: David Wootton, Terence Cave, Felicity Green
Contemporary philosophers (3)
Bergson and Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.
9 May 2019
Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
23 May 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene
Popper
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.
8 February 2007
Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright
Corresponding Fellows of the British Academy (3)
Bergson and Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.
9 May 2019
Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
23 May 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene
William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience
Melvyn Bragg and guests Jonathan Ree, John Haldane and Gwen Griffith-Dickson discuss The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James.
13 May 2010
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, John Haldane, Gwen Griffith-Dickson
History of psychology (3)
Bergson and Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.
9 May 2019
Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair
Hysteria
Melvyn Bragg discusses a problematic notion which can be an emotional condition, a syndrome, an over-reaction, or the physical signs of trauma, which became the bedrock for psychoanalysis.
22 April 2004
Featuring: Juliet Mitchell, Rachel Bowlby, Brett Kahr
The Mind/Body Problem
Melvyn Bragg discusses the history of thought about the mind/body problem in philosophy. Does the mind rule the body or the body rule the mind? And where does the mind reside?
13 January 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Julian Baggini, Sue James
Religion and politics (3)
The Divine Right of Kings
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Divine Right of Kings. The idea that kingly authority derives from God alone bit deep into the culture of 17th century Britain.
11 October 2007
Featuring: Justin Champion, Thomas Healy, Clare Jackson
The Gordon Riots
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss why a Westminster protest against 'Popery' in June 1780 led to widespread rioting across London, lethally suppressed.
2 May 2019
Featuring: Ian Haywood, Catriona Kennedy, Mark Knights
Toleration
Melvyn Bragg discusses what had happened in England to make diverse religions ‘tolerable’. What was the philosophy and politics behind the idea of toleration, and does it differ from tolerance?
20 May 2004
Featuring: Justin Champion, David Wootton, Sarah Barber
Persecution of Christians (3)
Nero
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the reputation of Nero, popular with his subjects but vilified in his lifetime and after and associated with the Beast in the Book of Revelation.
25 April 2019
Featuring: Maria Wyke, Matthew Nicholls, Shushma Malik
The Boxer Rebellion
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Boxer Rebellion, when the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists purged China of foreign influences in the summer of 1900.
19 March 2009
Featuring: Frances Wood, Rana Mitter, R. G. Tiedemann
The French Revolution's Reign of Terror
Melvyn Bragg discusses the reign of terror during the French Revolution and whether it was an aberration of the revolutionary cause or its natural culmination.
26 May 2005
Featuring: Mike Broers, Rebecca Spang, Tim Blanning
Burials at Montparnasse Cemetery (3)
Samuel Beckett
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the author of Waiting for Godot, who lived in Paris and wrote in French as he found that more difficult than writing in English
17 January 2019
Featuring: Steven Connor, Laura Salisbury, Mark Nixon
Sartre
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
7 October 2004
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells
Simone de Beauvoir
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.
22 October 2015
Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd
Irish male novelists (3)
Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce's groundbreaking 1916 novel about growing up in Catholic Ireland.
26 November 2009
Featuring: Roy Foster, Katherine Mullin, Jeri Johnson
Oscar Wilde
Melvyn Bragg discusses Oscar Wilde, the Aesthetes and his literary legacy. Was Wilde a reactionary - the last of the romantics - or was he the midwife to modernism?
6 December 2001
Featuring: Valentine Cunningham, Regenia Gagnier, Neil Sammells
Samuel Beckett
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the author of Waiting for Godot, who lived in Paris and wrote in French as he found that more difficult than writing in English
17 January 2019
Featuring: Steven Connor, Laura Salisbury, Mark Nixon
Irish Nobel laureates (3)
Samuel Beckett
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the author of Waiting for Godot, who lived in Paris and wrote in French as he found that more difficult than writing in English
17 January 2019
Featuring: Steven Connor, Laura Salisbury, Mark Nixon
Yeats and Irish Politics
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poet W.B. Yeats and Irish politics from the suspension of home rule to the division of Ireland.
17 April 2008
Featuring: Roy Foster, Fran Brearton, Warwick Gould
Yeats and Mysticism
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and beliefs of the Irish Poet W B Yeats and explores how a passion for magic and mysticism served and stood alongside his poetry.
31 January 2002
Featuring: Roy Foster, Warwick Gould, Brenda Maddox
Scholars of Trinity College Dublin (3)
Bishop Berkeley
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the philosopher George Berkeley, one of the most significant thinkers of the 18th century.
20 March 2014
Featuring: Peter Millican, Tom Stoneham, Michela Massimi
Oscar Wilde
Melvyn Bragg discusses Oscar Wilde, the Aesthetes and his literary legacy. Was Wilde a reactionary - the last of the romantics - or was he the midwife to modernism?
6 December 2001
Featuring: Valentine Cunningham, Regenia Gagnier, Neil Sammells
Samuel Beckett
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the author of Waiting for Godot, who lived in Paris and wrote in French as he found that more difficult than writing in English
17 January 2019
Featuring: Steven Connor, Laura Salisbury, Mark Nixon
Writers from Dublin (city) (3)
Edmund Burke
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke, whose views on revolution in America and France were hugely influential.
3 June 2010
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Richard Bourke, John Keane
Oscar Wilde
Melvyn Bragg discusses Oscar Wilde, the Aesthetes and his literary legacy. Was Wilde a reactionary - the last of the romantics - or was he the midwife to modernism?
6 December 2001
Featuring: Valentine Cunningham, Regenia Gagnier, Neil Sammells
Samuel Beckett
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the author of Waiting for Godot, who lived in Paris and wrote in French as he found that more difficult than writing in English
17 January 2019
Featuring: Steven Connor, Laura Salisbury, Mark Nixon
Catholic theology and doctrine (3)
Just War
Melvyn Bragg examines where the idea of a just war originated and whether after over 100 years of almost unimaginably violent conflict, the term has any meaning at all.
3 June 1999
Featuring: John Keane, Niall Ferguson
Papal Infallibility
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of the idea that Popes cannot err when defining a doctrine, in office, proclaimed at the First Vatican Council 1869-70
10 January 2019
Featuring: Tom O'Loughlin, Rebecca Rist, Miles Pattenden
Purgatory
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of Purgatory as an idea and, from C12th, as a place imagined alongside Heaven and Hell where souls of sinners would be purged by fire.
25 May 2017
Featuring: Laura Ashe, Matthew Treherne, Helen Foxhall Forbes
Cotton Library (3)
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poem of the knight who interrupts King Arthur's Christmas celebrations, challenging someone to chop off his head if he can do the same in return
13 December 2018
Featuring: Laura Ashe, Ad Putter, Simon Armitage
The Lindisfarne Gospels
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 8th century manuscripts that united the Celtic and Roman church and cultures in England, and are often seen as the first artworks of Christian Britain.
20 February 2003
Featuring: Richard Gameson, Clare Lees, Michelle Brown
The Magna Carta
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Magna Carta, the charter issued by King John in 1215 that is often seen as the basis of English liberties.
7 May 2009
Featuring: Nicholas Vincent, David Carpenter, Michael Clanchy
French queens consort (3)
Eleanor of Aquitaine
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Eleanor of Aquitaine (c1122-1204), who was a ruler in her own right as well as married to the king of France and then to the king of England.
28 January 2016
Featuring: Lindy Grant, Nicholas Vincent, Julie Barrau
Marie Antoinette
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Austrian princess who, while still a child, married the future Louis XVI of France only to face hostility and death under the French Revolution.
8 November 2018
Featuring: Catriona Seth, Katherine Astbury, David McCallam
Mary, Queen of Scots
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, who might have united the French, English and Scottish thrones.
19 January 2017
Featuring: David Forsyth, Anna Groundwater, John Guy
Royal reburials (3)
Frederick the Great
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Frederick II, king of Prussia from 1740 to 1786.
2 July 2015
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Katrin Kohl, Thomas Biskup
Marie Antoinette
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Austrian princess who, while still a child, married the future Louis XVI of France only to face hostility and death under the French Revolution.
8 November 2018
Featuring: Catriona Seth, Katherine Astbury, David McCallam
Napoleon and Wellington
Melvyn Bragg discusses the comparative histories of Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington, two titans of nineteenth century history.
25 October 2001
Featuring: Andrew Roberts, Mike Broers, Belinda Beaton
19th-century American poets (3)
Edith Wharton
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Wharton's novels, which explore the world of the privileged in America's Gilded Age, in which she lived, written in hindsight and with little mercy.
4 October 2018
Featuring: Hermione Lee, Bridget Bennett, Laura Rattray
Emily Dickinson
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Emily Dickinson, the now-celebrated poet of Amherst, who was prolific yet chose to publish few of her poems.
11 May 2017
Featuring: Fiona Green, Linda Freedman, Paraic Finnerty
Thoreau and the American Idyll
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the American 19th century writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau
15 January 2009
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Tim Morris, Stephen Fender
American autobiographers (3)
Benjamin Franklin
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.
1 March 2012
Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara
Edith Wharton
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Wharton's novels, which explore the world of the privileged in America's Gilded Age, in which she lived, written in hindsight and with little mercy.
4 October 2018
Featuring: Hermione Lee, Bridget Bennett, Laura Rattray
Frederick Douglass
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the prominent abolitionist, who in 1845 told his story in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.
9 February 2018
Featuring: Celeste-Marie Bernier, Karen Salt, Nicholas Guyatt
18th century in technology (3)
Automata
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of ideas about machines imitating living creatures, and the questions they raise about the differences between machinery and humanity.
20 September 2018
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Elly Truitt, Franziska Kohlt
Consequences of the Industrial Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the far-reaching consequences of the Industrial Revolution, which brought widespread social and intellectual change to Britain.
30 December 2010
Featuring: Jane Humphries, Emma Griffin, Lawrence Goldman
The Industrial Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Industrial Revolution, a period of rapid technological development which brought widespread social and intellectual change to Britain.
23 December 2010
Featuring: Jeremy Black, Pat Hudson, William Ashworth
Public domain books (3)
The Iliad
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the story of a crucial 40 days in the 10-year battle for Troy, framed by Achilles' anger first at his leader Agamenmon and then at his enemy Hector.
13 September 2018
Featuring: Edith Hall, Barbara Graziosi, Paul Cartledge
The Odyssey
Melvyn Bragg discusses Homer’s Odyssey, the epic story of the Greek hero Odysseus’ journey back from Troy, and its foundational position in the history of western literature and ideas.
9 September 2004
Featuring: Simon Goldhill, Edith Hall, Oliver Taplin
The Riddle of the Sands
Melvyn Bragg discusses the prescient thriller ‘The Riddle of the Sands’ and the decline Anglo-German relations before the First World War.
12 June 2008
Featuring: Richard J. Evans, Rosemary Ashton, T. C. W. Blanning
Botanical illustrators (3)
Alfred Russel Wallace
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Victorian pioneer of evolutionary theory Alfred Russel Wallace.
21 March 2013
Featuring: Steve Jones, George Beccaloni, Ted Benton
Hokusai
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849), whose views of Mt Fuji such as The Great Wave off Kanagawa (pictured) are some of the most iconic in world art.
30 March 2017
Featuring: Angus Lockyer, Rosina Buckland, Ellis Tinios
William Morris
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss some of the many aspects of William Morris: his activism, poetry and prose and his ideas on arts, crafts and work in an industrial world.
5 July 2018
Featuring: Ingrid Hanson, Marcus Waithe, Jane Thomas
English fantasy writers (3)
Christina Rossetti
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Victorian poet Christina Rossetti.
1 December 2011
Featuring: Dinah Birch, Rhian Williams, Nicholas Shrimpton
Swift's A Modest Proposal
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jonathan Swift's satirical 1729 pamphlet A Modest Proposal, which reveals much about attitudes to the Irish and the poor in 18th-Century Britain.
29 January 2009
Featuring: John Mullan, Judith Hawley, Ian McBride
William Morris
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss some of the many aspects of William Morris: his activism, poetry and prose and his ideas on arts, crafts and work in an industrial world.
5 July 2018
Featuring: Ingrid Hanson, Marcus Waithe, Jane Thomas
Mythopoeic writers (3)
Milton
Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.
7 March 2002
Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden
Rudyard Kipling
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Rudyard Kipling, a writer sometimes described as the poet of empire.
16 October 2014
Featuring: Howard Booth, Daniel Karlin, Jan Montefiore
William Morris
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss some of the many aspects of William Morris: his activism, poetry and prose and his ideas on arts, crafts and work in an industrial world.
5 July 2018
Featuring: Ingrid Hanson, Marcus Waithe, Jane Thomas
History of United States expansionism (3)
The California Gold Rush
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the California Gold Rush of the 1850s, when a chance discovery of gold led to massive demographic changes to parts of America.
2 April 2015
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Jacqueline Fear-Segal, Frank Cogliano
The Mexican-American War
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 1846-48 American war against Mexico, in which America won over a million square kilometres of Mexican territory, including California.
28 June 2018
Featuring: Frank Cogliano, Jacqueline Fear-Segal, Thomas Rath
The War of 1812
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the War of 1812, the conflict between America and Great Britain which is sometimes referred to as the second American War of Independence.
31 January 2013
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Lawrence Goldman, Frank Cogliano
Wars involving the United States (3)
The Boxer Rebellion
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Boxer Rebellion, when the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists purged China of foreign influences in the summer of 1900.
19 March 2009
Featuring: Frances Wood, Rana Mitter, R. G. Tiedemann
The Mexican-American War
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 1846-48 American war against Mexico, in which America won over a million square kilometres of Mexican territory, including California.
28 June 2018
Featuring: Frank Cogliano, Jacqueline Fear-Segal, Thomas Rath
The War of 1812
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the War of 1812, the conflict between America and Great Britain which is sometimes referred to as the second American War of Independence.
31 January 2013
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Lawrence Goldman, Frank Cogliano
Perception (3)
Echolocation
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how animals such as bats and dolphins evolved to use high frequency sounds to navigate their environments and find their prey.
21 June 2018
Featuring: Kate Jones, Gareth Jones, Dean Waters
Perception and the Senses
Melvyn Bragg discusses perception: how the brain reacts to the mass of data continually crowding it and examines what governs our perception of the world.
28 April 2005
Featuring: Richard Gregory, David Moore, Gemma Calvert
Time
Melvyn Bragg examines the history of mankind’s attempt to understand the nature of time. Does it exist independently of our perception of it, or is it merely a figment of our imagination?
30 December 1999
Featuring: Neil Johnson, Lee Smolin
Medieval legends (3)
Prester John
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Prester John, the legendary Christian king said to rule over a lost nation in 'The Indies' and ready to support Christians in Europe.
4 June 2015
Featuring: Marianne O'Doherty, Martin Palmer, Amanda Power
The Mabinogion
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Welsh stories of Arthurian romance and Celtic mythology created in the oral tradition for centuries before being written down in the Middle Ages.
10 May 2018
Featuring: Sioned Davies, Helen Fulton, Juliette Wood
Tristan and Iseult
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Tristan and Iseult, as told by Thomas of Britain and Beroul in the 12th century and reworked by Gottfried of Strasbourg and others, including Wagner.
31 December 2015
Featuring: Laura Ashe, Juliette Wood, Mark Chinca
Historical transcontinental empires (3)
Byzantium
Melvyn Bragg discusses the culture, history and legacy of the eastern Byzantine Empire, and examines why it has so often been sidelined and undermined by historians.
19 July 2001
Featuring: Charlotte Roueché, John Julius Norwich, Liz James
The Almoravid Empire
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Berber people who dominated the western Maghreb and the south of the Iberian Peninsula from C11th, defending Al-Andalus from Christian attack.
3 May 2018
Featuring: Amira Bennison, Nicola Clarke, Hugh Kennedy
The British Empire
Melvyn Bragg discusses the British Empire, what drove Britain to follow the imperial road and what was its legacy?
8 November 2001
Featuring: Maria Misra, Peter Cain, Catherine Hall
Novels set in England (3)
Emma
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jane Austen's novel Emma, which features, according to Austen, 'a heroine whom no-one but myself will much like'.
19 November 2015
Featuring: Janet Todd, John Mullan, Emma Clery
Middlemarch
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss George Eliot's Study of Provincial Life, set before the Reform Act 1832 in a small, fictional town in the Midlands surrounded by farmland.
18 April 2018
Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Kathryn Hughes, John Bowen
Voltaire's Candide
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Voltaire's satirical novel Candide, first published in 1759.
3 May 2012
Featuring: David Wootton, Nicholas Cronk, Caroline Warman
19th-century British inventors (3)
Ada Lovelace
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 19th century mathematician and hard living daughter of Lord Byron, Ada Lovelace.
6 March 2008
Featuring: Patricia Fara, Doron Swade, John Fuegi
Brunel
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the Victorian engineer responsible for bridges, tunnels and railways still in use today.
13 November 2014
Featuring: Julia Elton, Ben Marsden, Crosbie Smith
George and Robert Stephenson
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss George Stephenson, known as the Father of Railways, and his son Robert, designer of the Rocket, whose contribution was arguably even greater.
11 April 2018
Featuring: Michael Bailey, Julia Elton, Colin Divall
French sociologists (3)
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
23 May 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene
Sartre
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
7 October 2004
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells
Tocqueville: Democracy in America
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alexis de Tocqueville and his study of the American democratic system, written as an example to France of how democracy might develop there.
22 March 2018
Featuring: Robert Gildea, Susan-Mary Grant, Jeremy Jennings
Military theorists (3)
Clausewitz and On War
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss On War, the 19th-century treatise on the theory of warfare by the Prussian soldier Carl von Clausewitz.
17 May 2012
Featuring: Saul David, Hew Strachan, Beatrice Heuser
Machiavelli and the Italian City States
Melvyn Bragg discusses the political philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli. Inspired by the model of Cesare Borgia, he wrote a notorious manual of power still read today.
9 December 2004
Featuring: Quentin Skinner, Evelyn Welch, Lisa Jardine
Sun Tzu and The Art of War
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Chinese military adviser Sun Tzu from the 6th century BC and the influential work of military strategy associated with him, The Art of War.
1 March 2018
Featuring: Hilde de Weerdt, Tim Barrett, Imre Galambos
Latin letter writers (3)
Cicero
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Cicero's political ideas on laws, duty, tyrants and the republic, which he developed as the Roman Republic was threatened by Caesar and civil wars.
25 January 2018
Featuring: Melissa Lane, Catherine Steel, Valentina Arena
Pliny the Younger
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Roman lawyer and statesman Pliny the Younger, whose letters offer a fascinating insight into his life and the ancient world.
12 December 2013
Featuring: Catharine Edwards, Roy Gibson, Alice König
Seneca the Younger
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Seneca: philosopher, playwright, tutor to Nero, one of the first great writers born in the new Roman empire after the fall of the Republic.
23 February 2017
Featuring: Mary Beard, Catharine Edwards, Alessandro Schiesaro
Roman-era philosophers (3)
Cicero
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Cicero's political ideas on laws, duty, tyrants and the republic, which he developed as the Roman Republic was threatened by Caesar and civil wars.
25 January 2018
Featuring: Melissa Lane, Catherine Steel, Valentina Arena
Pliny's Natural History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Pliny the Elder's Natural History, a comprehensive and influential encyclopedia of the natural sciences written in the first century AD.
8 July 2010
Featuring: Serafina Cuomo, Aude Doody, Liba Taub
Seneca the Younger
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Seneca: philosopher, playwright, tutor to Nero, one of the first great writers born in the new Roman empire after the fall of the Republic.
23 February 2017
Featuring: Mary Beard, Catharine Edwards, Alessandro Schiesaro
Sieges involving the Ottoman Empire (3)
Constantinople Siege and Fall
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 1453 siege of Constantinople. A bitter and bloody 53 days that ended a thousand years of the Byzantine Empire.
28 December 2006
Featuring: Roger Crowley, Judith Herrin, Colin Imber
The Siege of Malta, 1565
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the fierce contest for Malta, which the Ottomans tried to prise from the Knights Hospitaller who they they had already driven from Rhodes in 1522.
11 January 2018
Featuring: Helen Nicholson, Diarmaid MacCulloch, Kate Fleet
The Siege of Vienna
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 1683 siege of Vienna by the Ottoman Army. The ensuing tale of blood and drama helped define the boundaries of Europe.
14 May 2009
Featuring: Jeremy Black, Andrew Wheatcroft, Claire Norton
Corresponding members of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences (3)
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Gauss, 'prince of mathematicians', including those on number theory, geometry, probability theory, astronomy and electromagnetism.
30 November 2017
Featuring: Marcus du Sautoy, Colva Roney-Dougal, Nick Evans
The Curies
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the scientific achievements of the Curie family, Marie and Pierre and their daughter Irene Joliot-Curie, all three of whom won Nobel Prizes.
26 March 2015
Featuring: Patricia Fara, Robert Fox, Steven T Bramwell
Tolstoy
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and times of the 19th century Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, whose novels such as War and Peace gave expression to the compelling moral and social questions of their day.
25 April 2002
Featuring: A. N. Wilson, Catriona Kelly, Sarah Hudspith
Optical physicists (3)
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Gauss, 'prince of mathematicians', including those on number theory, geometry, probability theory, astronomy and electromagnetism.
30 November 2017
Featuring: Marcus du Sautoy, Colva Roney-Dougal, Nick Evans
Maxwell
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and work of the often overlooked 19th century Scottish scientist, and his enormous contribution to the creation of the technological age in which we live.
2 October 2003
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Peter Harman, Joanna Haigh
Michael Faraday
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Michael Faraday, the most famous British scientist of the 19th century.
25 December 2015
Featuring: Geoffrey Cantor, Laura Herz, Frank James
City founders (3)
Akhenaten
Melvyn Bragg and guests Elizabeth Frood, Richard Parkinson and Kate Spence discuss Akhenaten, the ruler who brought revolutionary change to ancient Egypt.
1 October 2009
Featuring: Richard Parkinson, Elizabeth Frood, Kate Spence
Alexander the Great
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and legacy of Alexander the Great, king of Macedon and conqueror of the Persian Empire.
1 October 2015
Featuring: Paul Cartledge, Diana Spencer, Rachel Mairs
Constantine the Great
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Constantine the Great, the Roman emperor who made Constantinople his capital rather than Rome and who legalised Christianity across the Empire.
5 October 2017
Featuring: Christopher Kelly, Lucy Grig, Greg Woolf
Nonlinear narrative novels (3)
James Joyce's Ulysses
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss James Joyce's celebrated novel Ulysses.
14 June 2012
Featuring: Steven Connor, Jeri Johnson, Richard Brown
Tristram Shandy
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Laurence Sterne's comic novel Tristram Shandy.
24 April 2014
Featuring: Judith Hawley, John Mullan, Mary Newbould
Wuthering Heights
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Emily Bronte's story of Heathcliff and Cathy, of love, hatred, revenge and self-destruction across two generations in a remote moorland home.
28 September 2017
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Bowen, Alexandra Lewis
Christian poets (3)
Emily Dickinson
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Emily Dickinson, the now-celebrated poet of Amherst, who was prolific yet chose to publish few of her poems.
11 May 2017
Featuring: Fiona Green, Linda Freedman, Paraic Finnerty
Kierkegaard
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.
20 March 2008
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt
Milton
Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.
7 March 2002
Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden
13th-century Latin writers (3)
Gerald of Wales
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the medieval scholar Gerald of Wales, the author of colourful and influential works about his journeys around Ireland and Wales.
4 October 2012
Featuring: Henrietta Leyser, Michelle Brown, Huw Pryce
Roger Bacon
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss medieval English scholar Roger Bacon, an early pioneer of science who became known as Doctor Mirabilis.
20 April 2017
Featuring: Jack Cunningham, Amanda Power, Elly Truitt
St Thomas Aquinas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss St Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic Church's foremost western philosopher and theologian.
17 September 2009
Featuring: Martin Palmer, John Haldane, Annabel Brett
13th-century philosophers (3)
Maimonides
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work and influence of Maimonides. Widely regarded as the greatest Jewish philosopher of the medieval period.
17 February 2011
Featuring: John Joseph Haldane, Sarah Stroumsa, Peter Adamson
Roger Bacon
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss medieval English scholar Roger Bacon, an early pioneer of science who became known as Doctor Mirabilis.
20 April 2017
Featuring: Jack Cunningham, Amanda Power, Elly Truitt
St Thomas Aquinas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss St Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic Church's foremost western philosopher and theologian.
17 September 2009
Featuring: Martin Palmer, John Haldane, Annabel Brett
European democratic socialists (3)
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Mill
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.
18 May 2006
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan
Rosa Luxemburg
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rosa Luxemburg, 'Red Rosa', a leading revolutionary and agitator in Poland and Germany until her arrest and murder in the Spartacus Revolt 1919.
13 April 2017
Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Mark Jones, Nadine Rossol
German revolutionaries (3)
Hitler in History
Melvyn Bragg examines the debate between various historiographical theories. How do Intentionalist, Structralist and Marxist views of history explain events in Nazi Germany?
5 October 2000
Featuring: Ian Kershaw, Niall Ferguson, Mary Fulbrook
Marx
Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.
14 July 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones
Rosa Luxemburg
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rosa Luxemburg, 'Red Rosa', a leading revolutionary and agitator in Poland and Germany until her arrest and murder in the Spartacus Revolt 1919.
13 April 2017
Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Mark Jones, Nadine Rossol
German women philosophers (3)
Hannah Arendt
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Hannah Arendt who examined totalitarianism and politics and, when covering the Eichmann trial, explored 'the banality of evil'.
2 February 2017
Featuring: Lyndsey Stonebridge, Frisbee Sheffield, Robert Eaglestone
Hildegard of Bingen
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the medieval mystic, composer and writer Hildegard of Bingen.
26 June 2014
Featuring: Miri Rubin, William Flynn, Almut Suerbaum
Rosa Luxemburg
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rosa Luxemburg, 'Red Rosa', a leading revolutionary and agitator in Poland and Germany until her arrest and murder in the Spartacus Revolt 1919.
13 April 2017
Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Mark Jones, Nadine Rossol
English biographers (3)
Dickens
Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?
12 July 2001
Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen
Elizabeth Gaskell's novel North and South
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, who set her 1855 novel in a version of Manchester she called Milton in the county of Darkshire.
9 March 2017
Featuring: Sally Shuttleworth, Dinah Birch, Jenny Uglow
Johnson
Melvyn Bragg discusses Samuel Johnson, a giant of 18th century literature, language and letters, and perhaps the most quotable Englishman to have ever lifted a pen.
27 October 2005
Featuring: John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Judith Hawley
Suffect consuls of Imperial Rome (3)
Pliny the Younger
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Roman lawyer and statesman Pliny the Younger, whose letters offer a fascinating insight into his life and the ancient world.
12 December 2013
Featuring: Catharine Edwards, Roy Gibson, Alice König
Seneca the Younger
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Seneca: philosopher, playwright, tutor to Nero, one of the first great writers born in the new Roman empire after the fall of the Republic.
23 February 2017
Featuring: Mary Beard, Catharine Edwards, Alessandro Schiesaro
Tacitus and the Decadence of Rome
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Roman historian Tacitus, whose portrayal of Roman decadence influences the way we see Rome today.
10 July 2008
Featuring: Catharine Edwards, Ellen O'Gorman, Maria Wyke
19th-century German novelists (3)
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.
12 January 2017
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson
German atheist writers (3)
Marx
Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.
14 July 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.
12 January 2017
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
People from the Province of Saxony (3)
Bismarck
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the original Iron Chancellor, Otto Von Bismarck, one of 19th Century Europe’s most influential statesmen and the founder of modern Germany.
22 March 2007
Featuring: Richard J Evans, Christopher Clark, Katharine Lerman
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.
12 January 2017
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson
Weber's The Protestant Ethic
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Max Weber's book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
27 March 2014
Featuring: Peter Ghosh, Sam Whimster, Linda Woodhead
Philosophers of nihilism (3)
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.
12 January 2017
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson
Sartre
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
7 October 2004
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells
Simone de Beauvoir
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.
22 October 2015
Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd
19th-century British philosophers (3)
Harriet Martineau
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Harriet Martineau who wrote extensively in the C19th on a wide range of subjects including abolition, and is called the mother of sociology.
8 December 2016
Featuring: Valerie Sanders, Karen O'Brien, Ella Dzelzainis
John Ruskin
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and work of John Ruskin, art and social critic, and one of the most influential figures of the Victorian era.
31 March 2005
Featuring: Dinah Birch, Keith Hanley, Stefan Collini
Mill
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.
18 May 2006
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan
British women essayists (3)
Fanny Burney
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the 18th-century writer Fanny Burney, also known as Frances D'Arblay and Frances Burney, best known for her novel Evelina.
23 April 2015
Featuring: Nicole Pohl, Judith Hawley, John Mullan
Harriet Martineau
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Harriet Martineau who wrote extensively in the C19th on a wide range of subjects including abolition, and is called the mother of sociology.
8 December 2016
Featuring: Valerie Sanders, Karen O'Brien, Ella Dzelzainis
Mary Wollstonecraft
Melvyn Bragg and guests John Mullan, Karen O'Brien and Barbara Taylor discuss the life and ideas of the pioneering British Enlightenment thinker Mary Wollstonecraft.
31 December 2009
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Mullan, Barbara Taylor
English suffragists (3)
Annie Besant
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life of 19th-century writer and campaigner Annie Besant.
21 June 2012
Featuring: Lawrence Goldman, David Stack, Yasmin Khan
Harriet Martineau
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Harriet Martineau who wrote extensively in the C19th on a wide range of subjects including abolition, and is called the mother of sociology.
8 December 2016
Featuring: Valerie Sanders, Karen O'Brien, Ella Dzelzainis
Mill
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.
18 May 2006
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan
Women of the Victorian era (3)
Ada Lovelace
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 19th century mathematician and hard living daughter of Lord Byron, Ada Lovelace.
6 March 2008
Featuring: Patricia Fara, Doron Swade, John Fuegi
Harriet Martineau
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Harriet Martineau who wrote extensively in the C19th on a wide range of subjects including abolition, and is called the mother of sociology.
8 December 2016
Featuring: Valerie Sanders, Karen O'Brien, Ella Dzelzainis
Octavia Hill
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Victorian reformer Octavia Hill, pioneer of social housing and campaigner for public open spaces.
7 April 2011
Featuring: Dinah Birch, Lawrence Goldman, Gillian Darley
Renaissance (3)
Renaissance Magic
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Renaissance obsession with Magic, including the serious and religious study of the 'hermetic texts' and the cabbala.
17 June 2004
Featuring: Peter Forshaw, Valery Rees, Jonathan Sawday
The 12th Century Renaissance
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the origins and impact of the philosophical, scientific, religious and architectural changes of the 12th century in western Europe.
20 October 2016
Featuring: Laura Ashe, Elisabeth van Houts, Giles Gasper
The Renaissance
Melvyn Bragg explores the veracity of modern claims about the Renaissance and whether our current perceptions about its role in cultural history stem from a 19th century historian.
8 June 2000
Featuring: Francis Ames-Lewis, Peter Burke, Evelyn Welch
Phase transitions (3)
Higgs Boson
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Higgs Boson; the God particle, which explains how all mass behaves. It is a legend among physicists but does it exist?
18 November 2004
Featuring: Jim Al-Khalili, David Wark, Roger Cashmore
Plasma
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss plasma. First observed in 1879, plasma is the most abundant matter in the universe, far more than solid, liquid or gas.
13 October 2016
Featuring: Justin Wark, Kate Lancaster, Bill Graham
States of Matter
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the science of matter and the states in which it can exist, from solids, liquids and gases to high-energy plasmas.
3 April 2014
Featuring: Andrea Sella, Athene Donald, Justin Wark
History of science by discipline (3)
History of logic
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the history of logic, the study of reasoning and argument.
21 October 2010
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Peter Millican, Rosanna Keefe
Renaissance Maths
Melvyn Bragg discusses Renaissance Mathematics and the change in the understanding of numbers, movement, time and even nature itself, culminating in the calculus of Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz.
2 June 2005
Featuring: Robert D. Kaplan, Jim Bennett, Jackie Stedall
The Invention of Photography
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the development and impact of photography in the 1830s, with heliographs, sun pictures, photogenic drawing, Daguerre and Fox Talbot.
7 July 2016
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Elizabeth Edwards, Alison Morrison-Low
Roman Catholic mystics (3)
Blaise Pascal
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the French polymath Blaise Pascal.
19 September 2013
Featuring: David Wootton, Michael Moriarty, Michela Massimi
Hildegard of Bingen
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the medieval mystic, composer and writer Hildegard of Bingen.
26 June 2014
Featuring: Miri Rubin, William Flynn, Almut Suerbaum
Margery Kempe and English Mysticism
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Margery Kempe (1373-1438), the English mystic who went to Jerusalem and dictated her life story, said to be the first autobiography in English.
2 June 2016
Featuring: Miri Rubin, Katherine Lewis, Anthony Bale
Events that forced the climate (3)
1816, the Year Without a Summer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the link between the eruption of Mt Tambora in 1815, the largest and most lethal in recorded history, with famines in Europe and America in 1816.
21 April 2016
Featuring: Clive Oppenheimer, Jane Stabler, Lawrence Goldman
The KT Boundary
Melvyn Bragg discusses the geological KT Boundary that points to a cataclysmic event in the history of the Earth; one that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs and the rise of the mammals.
23 June 2005
Featuring: Simon Kelley, Jane Francis, Mike Benton
The Permian-Triassic Boundary
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Permian-Triassic boundary and the greatest mass extinction the world has ever known.
28 June 2007
Featuring: Richard Corfield, Mike Benton, Jane Francis
Julii Caesares (3)
Agrippina the Younger
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Roman empress Agrippina the Younger, one of the most notorious and influential of the Roman empresses in the 1st century AD.
31 March 2016
Featuring: Catharine Edwards, Alice König, Matthew Nicholls
Julius Caesar
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and reputation of Julius Caesar, one of the most intriguing figures of Roman history.
2 October 2014
Featuring: Christopher Pelling, Catherine Steel, Maria Wyke
The Augustan Age
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the political regime and cultural influence of the Roman Emperor Augustus.
11 June 2009
Featuring: Mary Beard, Catharine Edwards, Duncan Kennedy
Organisations based in London with royal patronage (3)
Bedlam
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the early years of Europe's oldest psychiatric hospital, which opened as St Mary of Bethlehem outside Bishopsgate and soon became known as Bedlam.
17 March 2016
Featuring: Hilary Marland, Justin Champion, Jonathan Andrews
The History of the Royal Society
The Royal Society
Melvyn Bragg discusses how the formation of the Royal Society heralded the dawning of a new scientific era in the 17th century.
23 March 2006
Featuring: Stephen Pumfrey, Lisa Jardine, Michael Hunter
2nd-millennium BC establishments (3)
Babylon
Melvyn Bragg discusses the truth behind Babylon, the world’s oldest and most enigmatic of empires; from the the Tower of Babel and the Hanging Gardens to the Whore of Babylon.
3 June 2004
Featuring: Eleanor Robson, Irving Finkel, Andrew George
The Dawn of the Iron Age
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the dawn of the European Iron Age, a period of great upheaval when technology and societies were changed forever.
24 March 2011
Featuring: Barry Cunliffe, Sue Hamilton, Timothy Champion
The Maya Civilization
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Maya civilization in central America, from consolidation of power in the great cities after AD250 to their abandonment by the 16th century.
10 March 2016
Featuring: Elizabeth Graham, Matthew Restall, Benjamin Vis
Chartered companies (3)
The Dutch East India Company
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Dutch East India Company, which dominated the Asian spice trade in the 17th century and is sometimes called the first multinational corporation.
3 March 2016
Featuring: Anne Goldgar, Chris Nierstrasz, Helen Paul
The East India Company
Melvyn Bragg discusses the powerful private trading company that redrew the map of India, built an empire and reinvented the fashions and the foodstuffs of Britain.
26 June 2003
Featuring: Huw Bowen, Linda Colley, Maria Misra
The South Sea Bubble
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the South Sea Bubble, the speculation mania in early 18th-century England which ended in the financial ruin of many of its investors.
20 December 2012
Featuring: Anne Murphy, Helen Paul, Roey Sweet
American abolitionists (3)
Benjamin Franklin
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.
1 March 2012
Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara
Thomas Paine's Common Sense
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.
21 January 2016
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson
Thoreau and the American Idyll
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the American 19th century writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau
15 January 2009
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Tim Morris, Stephen Fender
American deists (3)
Benjamin Franklin
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.
1 March 2012
Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara
Thomas Edison
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of Thomas Edison, one of the great inventors and cultural figures of modern America.
9 December 2010
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Kathleen Burk, Iwan Morus
Thomas Paine's Common Sense
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.
21 January 2016
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson
Critics of Judaism (3)
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
Spinoza
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Spinoza whose profound and complex ideas about God had him celebrated as an atheist in the 18th century.
3 May 2007
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham
Thomas Paine's Common Sense
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.
21 January 2016
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson
Arthurian characters (3)
Merlin
Melvyn Bragg discusses Merlin, prophet, magician, king maker and the original mad man of the woods, distraught at the death of his lord in battle.
30 June 2005
Featuring: Juliette Wood, Stephen Knight, Peter Forshaw
The Fisher King
Melvyn Bragg and guests will be delving into the world of medieval myth and legend in pursuit of the powerful and enigmatic Fisher King.
17 January 2008
Featuring: Carolyne Larrington, Stephen Knight, Juliette Wood
Tristan and Iseult
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Tristan and Iseult, as told by Thomas of Britain and Beroul in the 12th century and reworked by Gottfried of Strasbourg and others, including Wagner.
31 December 2015
Featuring: Laura Ashe, Juliette Wood, Mark Chinca
Experimental physicists (3)
Michael Faraday
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Michael Faraday, the most famous British scientist of the 19th century.
25 December 2015
Featuring: Geoffrey Cantor, Laura Herz, Frank James
Rutherford
Melvyn Bragg discusses Ernest Rutherford. He is seen as the father of nuclear science, a great charismatic figure who mapped the landscape of the sub-atomic world.
19 February 2004
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Jim Al-Khalili, Patricia Fara
The Curies
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the scientific achievements of the Curie family, Marie and Pierre and their daughter Irene Joliot-Curie, all three of whom won Nobel Prizes.
26 March 2015
Featuring: Patricia Fara, Robert Fox, Steven T Bramwell
Burials at Highgate Cemetery (3)
Christina Rossetti
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Victorian poet Christina Rossetti.
1 December 2011
Featuring: Dinah Birch, Rhian Williams, Nicholas Shrimpton
Marx
Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.
14 July 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones
Michael Faraday
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Michael Faraday, the most famous British scientist of the 19th century.
25 December 2015
Featuring: Geoffrey Cantor, Laura Herz, Frank James
John Murray (publishing house) books (3)
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, the poem that made Byron famous.
6 January 2011
Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Jane Stabler, Emily Bernhard Jackson
Darwin: On the Origin of Species
Melvyn Bragg presents a series about the life and work of Charles Darwin. How Darwin was eventually persuaded to publish On the Origin of Species in November 1859.
7 January 2009
Featuring: Jim Moore, Steve Jones, Jim Secord, Johannes Vogel
Emma
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jane Austen's novel Emma, which features, according to Austen, 'a heroine whom no-one but myself will much like'.
19 November 2015
Featuring: Janet Todd, John Mullan, Emma Clery
Unsolved problems in computer science (3)
Artificial Intelligence
Melvyn Bragg discusses artificial intelligence and whether a computer could imitate the operations of the human mind.
8 December 2005
Featuring: Jon Agar, Alison Adam, Igor Aleksander
Artificial Intelligence
Melvyn Bragg discusses artificial intelligence and whether a computer could imitate the operations of the human mind.
8 December 2005
Featuring: Jon Agar, Alison Adam, Igor Aleksander
P v NP
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss P versus NP, an unsolved problem in maths that asks if the answers to all problems can be found as easily as they can be checked.
5 November 2015
Featuring: Colva Roney-Dougal, Timothy Gowers, Leslie Ann Goldberg
Feminist philosophers (3)
Mary Wollstonecraft
Melvyn Bragg and guests John Mullan, Karen O'Brien and Barbara Taylor discuss the life and ideas of the pioneering British Enlightenment thinker Mary Wollstonecraft.
31 December 2009
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Mullan, Barbara Taylor
Mill
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.
18 May 2006
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan
Simone de Beauvoir
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.
22 October 2015
Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd
French communists (3)
Sartre
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
7 October 2004
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells
Simone Weil
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil. Admired by Albert Camus and Iris Murdoch, she achieved a great deal in her short life.
15 November 2012
Featuring: Beatrice Han-Pile, Stephen Plant, David Levy
Simone de Beauvoir
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.
22 October 2015
Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd
French Marxists (3)
Camus
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Nobel Prize winning Algerian-French writer and existentialist philosopher Albert Camus.
3 January 2008
Featuring: Peter Dunwoodie, David Walker, Christina Howells
Sartre
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
7 October 2004
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells
Simone de Beauvoir
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.
22 October 2015
Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd
Jerusalem Prize recipients (3)
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Jorge Luis Borges
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges.
4 January 2007
Featuring: Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn
Simone de Beauvoir
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.
22 October 2015
Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd
French social commentators (3)
Montaigne
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Michel de Montaigne. Best known for his influential Essays, Montaigne is regarded as the father of modern sceptical thought.
25 April 2013
Featuring: David Wootton, Terence Cave, Felicity Green
Sartre
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
7 October 2004
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells
Simone de Beauvoir
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.
22 October 2015
Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd
Deified people (3)
Alexander the Great
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and legacy of Alexander the Great, king of Macedon and conqueror of the Persian Empire.
1 October 2015
Featuring: Paul Cartledge, Diana Spencer, Rachel Mairs
The Buddha
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life of Siddhartha Gautama, the originator of Buddhism, and examines why his teachings have now become one of the fastest growing religions of the Western world.
14 March 2002
Featuring: Peter Harvey, Kate Crosby, Mahinda Deegalle
The Divine Right of Kings
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Divine Right of Kings. The idea that kingly authority derives from God alone bit deep into the culture of 17th century Britain.
11 October 2007
Featuring: Justin Champion, Thomas Healy, Clare Jackson
Pseudoscience (3)
Lysenkoism
Melvyn Bragg discusses the dark world of science under Joseph Stalin through the career of his chief geneticist Trofim Lysenko.
5 June 2008
Featuring: Robert Service, Steve Jones, Catherine Merridale
Perpetual motion
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how the laws of thermodynamics put a stop to the idea perpetual motion.
24 September 2015
Featuring: Ruth Gregory, Frank Close, Steven Bramwell
Vitalism
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Vitalism, an 18th and 19th century quest for the spark of life and the science behind Frankenstein.
16 October 2008
Featuring: Patricia Fara, Andrew Mendelsohn, Pietro Corsi
German Freemasons (3)
Frederick the Great
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Frederick II, king of Prussia from 1740 to 1786.
2 July 2015
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Katrin Kohl, Thomas Biskup
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
Astrobiology (3)
Extra Terrestrials
Melvyn Bragg discusses whether there are reasons to suppose that some form of life might exist beyond, or even within, our solar system and what our chances of ever discovering such a planet are.
4 April 2002
Featuring: Simon Goodwin, Heather Couper, Ian Stewart
Extremophiles
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss extremophiles, the organisms thriving in very harsh conditions on Earth and providing clues to life forms on other planets.
25 June 2015
Featuring: Monica Grady, Ian Crawford, Nick Lane
The Origins of Life
Melvyn Bragg discusses how the world’s first organic matter originated, nearly four billion years ago. What is the single common ancestor from which all living matter on our planet derives?
23 September 2004
Featuring: Richard Dawkins, Richard Corfield, Linda Partridge
Classical liberalism (3)
The Physiocrats
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Physiocrats, an important group of economic thinkers in 18th-century France.
20 June 2013
Featuring: Richard Whatmore, Joel Felix, Helen Paul
Utilitarianism
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss utilitarianism, a moral theory that assesses acts by their tendency to increase pleasure in the world and decrease the amount of pain.
11 June 2015
Featuring: Melissa Lane, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Brad Hooker
Wealth of Nations
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Adam Smith's celebrated economic treatise The Wealth of Nations.
19 February 2015
Featuring: Richard Whatmore, Donald Winch, Helen Paul
Ethical theories (3)
Nihilism
Melvyn Bragg explores the history of Nihilism, a philosophy associated with Nietzsche that claims truth and morality are illusory. Has anything positive come out of the philosophy of ‘nothing’?
16 November 2000
Featuring: Rob Hopkins, Raymond Tallis, Catherine Belsey
Relativism
Melvyn Bragg discusses Relativism, a school of philosophical thought which holds to the idea that there are no absolute truths.
19 January 2006
Featuring: Barry Smith, Jonathan Rée, Kathleen Lennon
Utilitarianism
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss utilitarianism, a moral theory that assesses acts by their tendency to increase pleasure in the world and decrease the amount of pain.
11 June 2015
Featuring: Melissa Lane, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Brad Hooker
Knights Bachelor (3)
Popper
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.
8 February 2007
Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright
Rabindranath Tagore
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore, winner of the 1913 Nobel Prize for Literature.
7 May 2015
Featuring: Chandrika Kaul, Bashabi Fraser, John Stevens
Rutherford
Melvyn Bragg discusses Ernest Rutherford. He is seen as the father of nuclear science, a great charismatic figure who mapped the landscape of the sub-atomic world.
19 February 2004
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Jim Al-Khalili, Patricia Fara
18th-century English novelists (3)
Fanny Burney
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the 18th-century writer Fanny Burney, also known as Frances D'Arblay and Frances Burney, best known for her novel Evelina.
23 April 2015
Featuring: Nicole Pohl, Judith Hawley, John Mullan
Mary Wollstonecraft
Melvyn Bragg and guests John Mullan, Karen O'Brien and Barbara Taylor discuss the life and ideas of the pioneering British Enlightenment thinker Mary Wollstonecraft.
31 December 2009
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Mullan, Barbara Taylor
Swift's A Modest Proposal
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jonathan Swift's satirical 1729 pamphlet A Modest Proposal, which reveals much about attitudes to the Irish and the poor in 18th-Century Britain.
29 January 2009
Featuring: John Mullan, Judith Hawley, Ian McBride
Streathamites (3)
Edmund Burke
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke, whose views on revolution in America and France were hugely influential.
3 June 2010
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Richard Bourke, John Keane
Fanny Burney
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the 18th-century writer Fanny Burney, also known as Frances D'Arblay and Frances Burney, best known for her novel Evelina.
23 April 2015
Featuring: Nicole Pohl, Judith Hawley, John Mullan
Johnson
Melvyn Bragg discusses Samuel Johnson, a giant of 18th century literature, language and letters, and perhaps the most quotable Englishman to have ever lifted a pen.
27 October 2005
Featuring: John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Judith Hawley
16th-century male writers (3)
Machiavelli and the Italian City States
Melvyn Bragg discusses the political philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli. Inspired by the model of Cesare Borgia, he wrote a notorious manual of power still read today.
9 December 2004
Featuring: Quentin Skinner, Evelyn Welch, Lisa Jardine
Matteo Ricci and the Ming dynasty
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Matteo Ricci's 16th-century mission to Ming Dynasty China, an important early encounter between east and west.
16 April 2015
Featuring: Mary Laven, Craig Clunas, Anne Gerritsen
Montaigne
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Michel de Montaigne. Best known for his influential Essays, Montaigne is regarded as the father of modern sceptical thought.
25 April 2013
Featuring: David Wootton, Terence Cave, Felicity Green
Discoverers of chemical elements (3)
Robert Boyle
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Robert Boyle, a pioneering scientist and one of the first Fellows of the Royal Society.
12 June 2014
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Michael Hunter, Anna Marie Roos
Rutherford
Melvyn Bragg discusses Ernest Rutherford. He is seen as the father of nuclear science, a great charismatic figure who mapped the landscape of the sub-atomic world.
19 February 2004
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Jim Al-Khalili, Patricia Fara
The Curies
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the scientific achievements of the Curie family, Marie and Pierre and their daughter Irene Joliot-Curie, all three of whom won Nobel Prizes.
26 March 2015
Featuring: Patricia Fara, Robert Fox, Steven T Bramwell
Asharis (3)
Al-Biruni
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Central Asian polymath al-Biruni and his 11th-century book India, one of the first scholarly works about the country.
10 June 2010
Featuring: James Montgomery, Hugh Kennedy, Amira Bennison
Al-Ghazali
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Islamic scholar Al-Ghazali, one of the most significant and influential philosophers of the Middle Ages.
19 March 2015
Featuring: Peter Adamson, Carole Hillenbrand, Robert Gleave
Ibn Khaldun
Melvyn Bragg and guests Robert Hoyland, Robert Irwin and Hugh Kennedy discuss the life and ideas of the 14th-century Arab philosopher of history Ibn Khaldun.
4 February 2010
Featuring: Robert Hoyland, Robert Graham Irwin, Hugh N. Kennedy
Preclassical economists (3)
Al-Ghazali
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Islamic scholar Al-Ghazali, one of the most significant and influential philosophers of the Middle Ages.
19 March 2015
Featuring: Peter Adamson, Carole Hillenbrand, Robert Gleave
David Hume
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.
6 October 2011
Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris
Ibn Khaldun
Melvyn Bragg and guests Robert Hoyland, Robert Irwin and Hugh Kennedy discuss the life and ideas of the 14th-century Arab philosopher of history Ibn Khaldun.
4 February 2010
Featuring: Robert Hoyland, Robert Graham Irwin, Hugh N. Kennedy
Consciousness studies (3)
Phenomenology
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosophical movement phenomenology.
22 January 2015
Featuring: Simon Glendinning, Joanna Hodge, Stephen Mulhall
The Mind/Body Problem
Melvyn Bragg discusses the history of thought about the mind/body problem in philosophy. Does the mind rule the body or the body rule the mind? And where does the mind reside?
13 January 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Julian Baggini, Sue James
William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience
Melvyn Bragg and guests Jonathan Ree, John Haldane and Gwen Griffith-Dickson discuss The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James.
13 May 2010
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, John Haldane, Gwen Griffith-Dickson
Qualia (3)
Cogito Ergo Sum
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss one of the most famous statements in philosophy, 'Cogito ergo sum', Rene Descartes' attempt to establish what we can truly know.
28 April 2011
Featuring: Susan James, John Cottingham, Stephen Mulhall
Phenomenology
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosophical movement phenomenology.
22 January 2015
Featuring: Simon Glendinning, Joanna Hodge, Stephen Mulhall
Time
Melvyn Bragg examines the history of mankind’s attempt to understand the nature of time. Does it exist independently of our perception of it, or is it merely a figment of our imagination?
30 December 1999
Featuring: Neil Johnson, Lee Smolin
Truth (3)
Perception and the Senses
Melvyn Bragg discusses perception: how the brain reacts to the mass of data continually crowding it and examines what governs our perception of the world.
28 April 2005
Featuring: Richard Gregory, David Moore, Gemma Calvert
The Enlightenment in Britain
Melvyn Bragg examines the part British thinkers played in the Enlightenment in the 18th century, and examines whether the shifts of thought in those years provided the platform for the modern world.
18 January 2001
Featuring: Roy Porter, Linda Colley, Jeremy Black
Truth
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss philosophical approaches to truth.
18 December 2014
Featuring: Simon Blackburn, Jennifer Hornsby, Crispin Wright
Philosophical logic (3)
Ockham's Razor
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosophical idea of Ockham’s Razor and the medieval philosopher who gave his name to it, William of Ockham.
31 May 2007
Featuring: Anthony Kenny, Marilyn Adams, Richard Alan Cross
Rhetoric
Melvyn Bragg discusses Rhetoric, the art of speaking which is an expression of inner virtue and also fundamental to ideas about democracy.
28 October 2004
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Thomas Healy, Ceri Sullivan
Truth
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss philosophical approaches to truth.
18 December 2014
Featuring: Simon Blackburn, Jennifer Hornsby, Crispin Wright
Reality (3)
Perception and the Senses
Melvyn Bragg discusses perception: how the brain reacts to the mass of data continually crowding it and examines what governs our perception of the world.
28 April 2005
Featuring: Richard Gregory, David Moore, Gemma Calvert
Time
Melvyn Bragg examines the history of mankind’s attempt to understand the nature of time. Does it exist independently of our perception of it, or is it merely a figment of our imagination?
30 December 1999
Featuring: Neil Johnson, Lee Smolin
Truth
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss philosophical approaches to truth.
18 December 2014
Featuring: Simon Blackburn, Jennifer Hornsby, Crispin Wright
20th-century Austrian writers (3)
Kafka's The Trial
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Franz Kafka's novel The Trial.
27 November 2014
Featuring: Elizabeth Boa, Steve Connor, Ritchie Robertson
Popper
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.
8 February 2007
Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright
Wittgenstein
Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.
4 December 2003
Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn
Weird fiction writers (3)
Jorge Luis Borges
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges.
4 January 2007
Featuring: Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn
Kafka's The Trial
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Franz Kafka's novel The Trial.
27 November 2014
Featuring: Elizabeth Boa, Steve Connor, Ritchie Robertson
Rudyard Kipling
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Rudyard Kipling, a writer sometimes described as the poet of empire.
16 October 2014
Featuring: Howard Booth, Daniel Karlin, Jan Montefiore
20th-century deaths from tuberculosis (3)
Chekhov
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the great Russian writer Anton Chekhov.
14 March 2013
Featuring: Catriona Kelly, Cynthia Marsh, Rosamund Bartlett
Kafka's The Trial
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Franz Kafka's novel The Trial.
27 November 2014
Featuring: Elizabeth Boa, Steve Connor, Ritchie Robertson
Simone Weil
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil. Admired by Albert Camus and Iris Murdoch, she achieved a great deal in her short life.
15 November 2012
Featuring: Beatrice Han-Pile, Stephen Plant, David Levy
Lycée Henri-IV alumni (3)
Brunel
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the Victorian engineer responsible for bridges, tunnels and railways still in use today.
13 November 2014
Featuring: Julia Elton, Ben Marsden, Crosbie Smith
Sartre
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
7 October 2004
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells
Simone Weil
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil. Admired by Albert Camus and Iris Murdoch, she achieved a great deal in her short life.
15 November 2012
Featuring: Beatrice Han-Pile, Stephen Plant, David Levy
19th-century rebellions (3)
The Haitian Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Haitian Revolution of 1791-1804.
23 October 2014
Featuring: Kate Hodgson, Tim Lockley, Karen Salt
The Indian Rebellion
Melvyn Bragg and guests Faisal Devji, Shruti Kapila and Chandrika Kaul discuss the Indian Mutiny of 1857 and the rebellion which followed.
18 February 2010
Featuring: Chandrika Kaul, Faisal Devji, Shruti Kapila
The Taiping Rebellion
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Taiping Rebellion, a Chinese civil war which claimed around 20 million lives in the 19th century.
24 February 2011
Featuring: Rana Mitter, Frances Wood, Julia Lovell
12th-century Latin writers (3)
Abelard and Heloise
Melvyn Bragg discusses the story of Abelard and Heloise, a medieval tale of literature and philosophy, love and scandal in the high Middle Ages.
5 May 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Henrietta Leyser, Michael Clanchy
Gerald of Wales
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the medieval scholar Gerald of Wales, the author of colourful and influential works about his journeys around Ireland and Wales.
4 October 2012
Featuring: Henrietta Leyser, Michelle Brown, Huw Pryce
Hildegard of Bingen
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the medieval mystic, composer and writer Hildegard of Bingen.
26 June 2014
Featuring: Miri Rubin, William Flynn, Almut Suerbaum
Doctors of the Church (3)
Hildegard of Bingen
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the medieval mystic, composer and writer Hildegard of Bingen.
26 June 2014
Featuring: Miri Rubin, William Flynn, Almut Suerbaum
St Thomas Aquinas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss St Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic Church's foremost western philosopher and theologian.
17 September 2009
Featuring: Martin Palmer, John Haldane, Annabel Brett
The Venerable Bede
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Venerable Bede, who revolutionised history and scholarship, and became adopted by Rome as the last of the founding fathers of Christian religion.
25 November 2004
Featuring: Richard Gameson, Sarah Foot, Michelle Brown
17th-century English philosophers (3)
Hobbes
Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.
1 December 2005
Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett
Milton
Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.
7 March 2002
Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden
Robert Boyle
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Robert Boyle, a pioneering scientist and one of the first Fellows of the Royal Society.
12 June 2014
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Michael Hunter, Anna Marie Roos
Roman-era geographers (3)
Pliny's Natural History
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Pliny the Elder's Natural History, a comprehensive and influential encyclopedia of the natural sciences written in the first century AD.
8 July 2010
Featuring: Serafina Cuomo, Aude Doody, Liba Taub
Ptolemy and Ancient Astronomy
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the last of the great Greek astronomers of antiquity, Ptolemy, and his influence on ancient and medieval astronomy.
17 November 2011
Featuring: Liba Taub, Jim Bennett, Charles Burnett
Strabo's Geographica
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Strabo's Geographica, the only surviving work from the ancient world that describes the entire world known to the Greeks and Romans.
10 April 2014
Featuring: Paul Cartledge, Maria Pretzler, Benet Salway
Anglican philosophers (3)
Bishop Berkeley
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the philosopher George Berkeley, one of the most significant thinkers of the 18th century.
20 March 2014
Featuring: Peter Millican, Tom Stoneham, Michela Massimi
Edmund Burke
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke, whose views on revolution in America and France were hugely influential.
3 June 2010
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Richard Bourke, John Keane
Milton
Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.
7 March 2002
Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden
Trinitarianism (3)
Calvinism
Melvyn Bragg and guests Justin Champion, Susan Hardman Moore and Diarmaid MacCulloch explore the ideas of John Calvin and their impact.
25 February 2010
Featuring: Justin Champion, Susan Hardman Moore, Diarmaid MacCulloch
The Nicene Creed
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Nicene Creed, a statement of essential faith that established the Divinity of Christ and has been spoken for over 1600 years in Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Churches
27 December 2007
Featuring: Martin Palmer, Caroline Humfress, Andrew Louth
The Trinity
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the doctrine of the Trinity, the idea of a threefold God, which lies at the heart of Christianity.
13 March 2014
Featuring: Janet Soskice, Martin Palmer, The Reverend Graham Ward
Conservatism (3)
David Hume
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.
6 October 2011
Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris
Edmund Burke
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke, whose views on revolution in America and France were hugely influential.
3 June 2010
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Richard Bourke, John Keane
Social Darwinism
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Social Darwinism, a school of thought which attempted to apply Darwin's ideas about evolution to human society.
20 February 2014
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Gregory Radick, Charlotte Sleigh
Civilizations (3)
Rome and European Civilization
Melvyn Bragg discusses the role Rome has played in European civilization, from republicanism and imperialism to being the Catholic Heart of the Christian Church.
20 December 2001
Featuring: Mary Beard, Catharine Edwards, Greg Woolf
The Aztecs
Melvyn Bragg discusses the creation, power and legacy of the Aztec Empire, arguably the most ruthless, pre-Hispanic empire in North America which, at its zenith, ruled over 6 million people.
27 February 2003
Featuring: Alan Knight, Adrian Locke, Elizabeth Graham
The Phoenicians
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Phoenicians, the celebrated maritime traders of the ancient Mediterranean.
6 February 2014
Featuring: Mark Woolmer, Josephine Quinn, Cyprian Broodbank
History of Earth science (3)
Ageing the Earth
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Age of the Earth, and how to make sense of four and half billions years of time.
20 November 2003
Featuring: Richard Corfield, Hazel Rymer, Henry Gee
Catastrophism
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Catastrophism, the idea that the geological record was shaped by a series of natural disasters early in the Earth's history.
30 January 2014
Featuring: Andrew Scott, Jan Zalasiewicz, Leucha Veneer
Early Geology
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the emergence of geology as a scientific discipline.
12 April 2012
Featuring: Stephen Pumfrey, Andrew Scott, Leucha Veneer
Complex systems theory (3)
Chaos Theory
Melvyn Bragg discusses how Chaos Theory has affected our understanding of the universe and whether there might be an inherent order behind the fluctuations of the stock market or the British weather.
16 May 2002
Featuring: Susan Greenfield, David Papineau, Neil Johnson
Complexity
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the science of complex systems, and its importance to understanding the world around us.
19 December 2013
Featuring: Ian Stewart, Jeff Johnson, Eve Mitleton-Kelly
The Unintended Consequences of Mathematics
Melvyn Bragg and guests explore the unintended consequences of mathematical discoveries, from alternating current to predicting the path of asteroids.
11 February 2010
Featuring: John D. Barrow, Colva Roney-Dougal, Marcus du Sautoy
History of the Church of England (3)
The Book of Common Prayer
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Book of Common Prayer, published after the Reformation in order to make church liturgy available in English.
17 October 2013
Featuring: Diarmaid MacCulloch, Alexandra Walsham, Martin Palmer
The Oxford Movement
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Oxford Movement which asserted the Catholic tradition of the Church of England in the 19th century.
13 April 2006
Featuring: Sheridan Gilley, Frances Knight, Simon Skinner
The Pilgrim Fathers
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Pilgrim Fathers and why their 1620 voyage on the Mayflower has become iconic in the American imagination.
5 July 2007
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Harry Bennett, Tim Lockley
English Reformation (3)
Foxe's Book of Martyrs
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Foxe's Book of Martyrs, the celebrated sixteenth-century account of the suffering of Christian martyrs.
18 November 2010
Featuring: Diarmaid MacCulloch, Justin Champion, Elizabeth Evenden
John Wycliff and the Lollards
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the medieval philosopher and theologian John Wyclif and his followers, the Lollards.
16 June 2011
Featuring: Anthony Kenny, Anne Hudson, Rob Lutton
The Book of Common Prayer
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Book of Common Prayer, published after the Reformation in order to make church liturgy available in English.
17 October 2013
Featuring: Diarmaid MacCulloch, Alexandra Walsham, Martin Palmer
Philosophers of linguistics (3)
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
23 May 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene
Gnosticism (3)
Catharism
Melvyn Bragg examines the beliefs of the Cathars, a medieval southern European Christian sect accused of heresy, and explores why they were seen as a threat to the 13th century Catholic Church.
17 January 2002
Featuring: Malcolm Barber, Miri Rubin, Euan Cameron
Gnosticism
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Gnosticism, a religious sect associated with early Christianity.
2 May 2013
Featuring: Martin Palmer, Caroline Humfress, Alastair Logan
The Fall
Melvyn Bragg discusses the idea of original sin and its impact on politics, gender and notions of morality in western culture, examining Augustine, Milton, the Masaccio frescoes and Charles Darwin.
8 April 2004
Featuring: Martin Palmer, Griselda Pollock, John Carey
Western esotericism (3)
Gnosticism
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Gnosticism, a religious sect associated with early Christianity.
2 May 2013
Featuring: Martin Palmer, Caroline Humfress, Alastair Logan
Neoplatonism
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Neoplatonism, a mystical school of thought founded by the third century philosopher Plotinus.
19 April 2012
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Peter Adamson, Anne Sheppard
Renaissance Magic
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Renaissance obsession with Magic, including the serious and religious study of the 'hermetic texts' and the cabbala.
17 June 2004
Featuring: Peter Forshaw, Valery Rees, Jonathan Sawday
Pyrrhonism (3)
Montaigne
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Michel de Montaigne. Best known for his influential Essays, Montaigne is regarded as the father of modern sceptical thought.
25 April 2013
Featuring: David Wootton, Terence Cave, Felicity Green
Relativism
Melvyn Bragg discusses Relativism, a school of philosophical thought which holds to the idea that there are no absolute truths.
19 January 2006
Featuring: Barry Smith, Jonathan Rée, Kathleen Lennon
Virtue
Melvyn Bragg discusses a history of the concept of virtue from the ancient Greeks to modern ideas, and examines why we need it and what ideals of behaviour provide a universal framework for it.
28 February 2002
Featuring: Galen Strawson, Miranda Fricker, Roger Crisp
English activists (3)
Alfred Russel Wallace
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Victorian pioneer of evolutionary theory Alfred Russel Wallace.
21 March 2013
Featuring: Steve Jones, George Beccaloni, Ted Benton
Annie Besant
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life of 19th-century writer and campaigner Annie Besant.
21 June 2012
Featuring: Lawrence Goldman, David Stack, Yasmin Khan
Octavia Hill
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Victorian reformer Octavia Hill, pioneer of social housing and campaigner for public open spaces.
7 April 2011
Featuring: Dinah Birch, Lawrence Goldman, Gillian Darley
Geometers (3)
Alfred Russel Wallace
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Victorian pioneer of evolutionary theory Alfred Russel Wallace.
21 March 2013
Featuring: Steve Jones, George Beccaloni, Ted Benton
Archimedes
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Greek mathematician Archimedes, brilliant with numbers and unexpectedly good at defensive siege warfare.
25 January 2007
Featuring: Jackie Stedall, Serafina Cuomo, George Phillips
Pythagoras
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and influence of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans.
10 December 2009
Featuring: Ian Stewart, Serafina Cuomo, John O'Connor
Georgists (3)
Alfred Russel Wallace
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Victorian pioneer of evolutionary theory Alfred Russel Wallace.
21 March 2013
Featuring: Steve Jones, George Beccaloni, Ted Benton
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Tolstoy
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and times of the 19th century Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, whose novels such as War and Peace gave expression to the compelling moral and social questions of their day.
25 April 2002
Featuring: A. N. Wilson, Catriona Kelly, Sarah Hudspith
Victorian writers (3)
Alfred Russel Wallace
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Victorian pioneer of evolutionary theory Alfred Russel Wallace.
21 March 2013
Featuring: Steve Jones, George Beccaloni, Ted Benton
Yeats and Irish Politics
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poet W.B. Yeats and Irish politics from the suspension of home rule to the division of Ireland.
17 April 2008
Featuring: Roy Foster, Fran Brearton, Warwick Gould
Yeats and Mysticism
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and beliefs of the Irish Poet W B Yeats and explores how a passion for magic and mysticism served and stood alongside his poetry.
31 January 2002
Featuring: Roy Foster, Warwick Gould, Brenda Maddox
Imperialism (3)
Cultural Imperialism
Melvyn Bragg discusses the idea that a dominating power such as ancient Greece, Persia, Rome, Islam, Britain and now America can exert a cultural and imitative influence.
27 June 2002
Featuring: Linda Colley, Phillip Dodd, Mary Beard
The British Empire
Melvyn Bragg discusses the British Empire, what drove Britain to follow the imperial road and what was its legacy?
8 November 2001
Featuring: Maria Misra, Peter Cain, Catherine Hall
The War of 1812
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the War of 1812, the conflict between America and Great Britain which is sometimes referred to as the second American War of Independence.
31 January 2013
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Lawrence Goldman, Frank Cogliano
Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge (3)
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Maxwell
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and work of the often overlooked 19th century Scottish scientist, and his enormous contribution to the creation of the technological age in which we live.
2 October 2003
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Peter Harman, Joanna Haigh
Wittgenstein
Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.
4 December 2003
Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn
Consequentialists (3)
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Machiavelli and the Italian City States
Melvyn Bragg discusses the political philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli. Inspired by the model of Cesare Borgia, he wrote a notorious manual of power still read today.
9 December 2004
Featuring: Quentin Skinner, Evelyn Welch, Lisa Jardine
Mill
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.
18 May 2006
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan
English political philosophers (3)
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Hobbes
Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.
1 December 2005
Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett
Mill
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.
18 May 2006
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan
English political writers (3)
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Mill
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.
18 May 2006
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan
Swift's A Modest Proposal
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jonathan Swift's satirical 1729 pamphlet A Modest Proposal, which reveals much about attitudes to the Irish and the poor in 18th-Century Britain.
29 January 2009
Featuring: John Mullan, Judith Hawley, Ian McBride
Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge (3)
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Rutherford
Melvyn Bragg discusses Ernest Rutherford. He is seen as the father of nuclear science, a great charismatic figure who mapped the landscape of the sub-atomic world.
19 February 2004
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Jim Al-Khalili, Patricia Fara
Wittgenstein
Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.
4 December 2003
Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn
Linguistic turn (3)
Bertrand Russell
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.
6 December 2012
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves
Logical Positivism
Melvyn Bragg and guests including Barry Smith discuss Logical Positivism, the radical philosophy of the Vienna Circle.
2 July 2009
Featuring: Barry Smith, Nancy Cartwright, Thomas Uebel
Wittgenstein
Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.
4 December 2003
Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn
Ancient people who committed suicide (3)
Boudica
Melvyn Bragg and guests Miranda Aldhouse-Green, Juliette Wood and Richard Hingley discuss the life and mythologisation of Boudica.
11 March 2010
Featuring: Juliette Wood, Richard Hingley, Miranda Aldhouse-Green
Cleopatra
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Cleopatra, the Egyptian pharaoh whose charisma, intelligence and beauty made her one of the most celebrated rulers of the ancient world.
2 December 2010
Featuring: Catharine Edwards, Maria Wyke, Susan Walker
Hannibal
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Hannibal, the Carthaginian general who famously led an army across the Alps.
11 October 2012
Featuring: Ellen O'Gorman, Mark Woolmer, Louis Rawlings
Scientific method (3)
Laws of Nature
Melvyn Bragg discusses the quest to find a single over-arching equation that unites all of physics and examines whether what is true in physics is true in all areas of existence.
19 October 2000
Featuring: Mark Buchanan, Frank Close, Nancy Cartwright
Scepticism
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the history of philosophical scepticism.
5 July 2012
Featuring: Peter Millican, Melissa Lane, Jill Kraye
The Scientific method
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Scientific Method, the systematic and analytical approach to scientific discovery.
26 January 2012
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, John Worrall, Michela Massimi
Alchemists of the medieval Islamic world (3)
Al-Biruni
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Central Asian polymath al-Biruni and his 11th-century book India, one of the first scholarly works about the country.
10 June 2010
Featuring: James Montgomery, Hugh Kennedy, Amira Bennison
Al-Kindi
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Al-Kindi, often described as the first philosopher in the Arabic tradition.
28 June 2012
Featuring: Hugh Kennedy, James Montgomery, Amira Bennison
Avicenna
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Avicenna, among the most important philosophers in the history of Islam.
8 November 2007
Featuring: Peter Adamson, Amira Bennison, Nader El-Bizri
British reformers (3)
Annie Besant
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life of 19th-century writer and campaigner Annie Besant.
21 June 2012
Featuring: Lawrence Goldman, David Stack, Yasmin Khan
Dickens
Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?
12 July 2001
Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen
Wilberforce
In an unusual edition of In Our Time, marking the 1807 Abolition of the Slave Trade, Melvyn Bragg leaves the studio to examine the life of William Wilberforce.
22 February 2007
Featuring
German untitled nobility (3)
Clausewitz and On War
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss On War, the 19th-century treatise on the theory of warfare by the Prussian soldier Carl von Clausewitz.
17 May 2012
Featuring: Saul David, Hew Strachan, Beatrice Heuser
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
Monism (3)
Materialism
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Materialism– the philosophical idea that matter constitutes all that exists.
24 April 2008
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Caroline Warman, Anthony O'Hear
Neoplatonism
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Neoplatonism, a mystical school of thought founded by the third century philosopher Plotinus.
19 April 2012
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Peter Adamson, Anne Sheppard
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
Counter-Reformation (3)
Erasmus
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the Dutch humanist scholar Desiderius Erasmus, one of the most significant figures of the Renaissance.
9 February 2012
Featuring: Diarmaid MacCulloch, Eamon Duffy, Jill Kraye
St Bartholomew's Day Massacre
Melvyn Bragg discusses the infamous St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in 1572 when the River Seine ran red with Protestant blood.
27 November 2003
Featuring: Diarmaid MacCulloch, Mark Greengrass, Penny Roberts
The Jesuits
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Jesuits and their role in the education, art, politics and mythology of the Counter-Reformation.
18 January 2007
Featuring: Nigel Aston, Simon Ditchfield, Dame Olwen Hufton
Ancient Greek mathematicians (3)
Archimedes
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Greek mathematician Archimedes, brilliant with numbers and unexpectedly good at defensive siege warfare.
25 January 2007
Featuring: Jackie Stedall, Serafina Cuomo, George Phillips
Ptolemy and Ancient Astronomy
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the last of the great Greek astronomers of antiquity, Ptolemy, and his influence on ancient and medieval astronomy.
17 November 2011
Featuring: Liba Taub, Jim Bennett, Charles Burnett
Pythagoras
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and influence of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans.
10 December 2009
Featuring: Ian Stewart, Serafina Cuomo, John O'Connor
British male non-fiction writers (3)
David Hume
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.
6 October 2011
Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris
Dickens
Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?
12 July 2001
Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen
Popper
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.
8 February 2007
Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright
Thought (3)
Cogito Ergo Sum
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss one of the most famous statements in philosophy, 'Cogito ergo sum', Rene Descartes' attempt to establish what we can truly know.
28 April 2011
Featuring: Susan James, John Cottingham, Stephen Mulhall
Perception and the Senses
Melvyn Bragg discusses perception: how the brain reacts to the mass of data continually crowding it and examines what governs our perception of the world.
28 April 2005
Featuring: Richard Gregory, David Moore, Gemma Calvert
The Mind/Body Problem
Melvyn Bragg discusses the history of thought about the mind/body problem in philosophy. Does the mind rule the body or the body rule the mind? And where does the mind reside?
13 January 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Julian Baggini, Sue James
Big Bang (3)
The Age of the Universe
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss a question which has obsessed cosmologists for millennia: how old is the Universe?
3 March 2011
Featuring: Martin Rees, Carolin Crawford, Carlos Frenk
The Universe's Origins
Melvyn Bragg examines the way thinking about the origins of the universe changed in the 20th century. Are we any closer to knowing whether other worlds exist and how our planet came into being?
20 May 1999
Featuring: Martin Rees, Paul Davies
The Universe's Shape
Melvyn Bragg discusses shape, size and topology of the universe and examines theories about its expansion. If it is already infinite, how can it be getting any bigger? And is there really only one?
7 February 2002
Featuring: Martin Rees, Julian Barbour, Janna Levin
Narratology (3)
Aristotle's Poetics
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aristotle's Poetics, the first and arguably most influential work of literary theory in history.
27 January 2011
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Nick Lowe, Stephen Halliwell
Epistolary Literature
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 18th Century fashion for epistolary literature including Aphra Benn, Samuel Richardson and Jane Austen.
15 March 2007
Featuring: John Mullan, Karen O'Brien, Brean Hammond
Rhetoric
Melvyn Bragg discusses Rhetoric, the art of speaking which is an expression of inner virtue and also fundamental to ideas about democracy.
28 October 2004
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Thomas Healy, Ceri Sullivan
Founding monarchs (3)
Athelstan
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the reign of King Athelstan, whose military exploits united much of England, Scotland and Wales under one ruler for the first time.
1 July 2010
Featuring: Sarah Foot, John Hines, Richard Gameson
Genghis Khan
Melvyn Bragg discusses Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire, one of the largest contiguous empires the world has ever seen.
1 February 2007
Featuring: Peter Jackson, Naomi Standen, George Lane
The Augustan Age
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the political regime and cultural influence of the Roman Emperor Augustus.
11 June 2009
Featuring: Mary Beard, Catharine Edwards, Duncan Kennedy
Humanities (3)
History and Understanding the Past
Melvyn Bragg examines whether we can ever predict the future by understanding the past. What kind of lessons is it possible for leaders, governments or people to take from history?
30 March 2000
Featuring: Richard J. Evans, Eric Hobsbawm
Roman Satire
Melvyn Bragg and guests Mary Beard, Denis Feeney and Duncan Kennedy discuss Roman satire.
22 April 2010
Featuring: Mary Beard, Denis Feeney, Duncan Kennedy
Tragedy
Melvyn Bragg discusses the history of the ancient genre of tragedy and examines whether we have a psychological need for it, either as catharsis or Schadenfreude.
2 December 1999
Featuring: George Steiner, Catherine Belsey
Theatrical genres (3)
Elizabethan Revenge
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss why revenge tragedy was so popular with Elizabethan theatre goers, from Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy to Shakespeare's Hamlet.
18 June 2009
Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Julie Sanders, Janet Clare
Roman Satire
Melvyn Bragg and guests Mary Beard, Denis Feeney and Duncan Kennedy discuss Roman satire.
22 April 2010
Featuring: Mary Beard, Denis Feeney, Duncan Kennedy
Tragedy
Melvyn Bragg discusses the history of the ancient genre of tragedy and examines whether we have a psychological need for it, either as catharsis or Schadenfreude.
2 December 1999
Featuring: George Steiner, Catherine Belsey
Principles (3)
Laws of Nature
Melvyn Bragg discusses the quest to find a single over-arching equation that unites all of physics and examines whether what is true in physics is true in all areas of existence.
19 October 2000
Featuring: Mark Buchanan, Frank Close, Nancy Cartwright
Ockham's Razor
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosophical idea of Ockham’s Razor and the medieval philosopher who gave his name to it, William of Ockham.
31 May 2007
Featuring: Anthony Kenny, Marilyn Adams, Richard Alan Cross
The Unintended Consequences of Mathematics
Melvyn Bragg and guests explore the unintended consequences of mathematical discoveries, from alternating current to predicting the path of asteroids.
11 February 2010
Featuring: John D. Barrow, Colva Roney-Dougal, Marcus du Sautoy
1660 establishments in England (3)
The History of the Royal Society
The Restoration
Melvyn Bragg examines the reign of Charles II and discusses whether the Restoration brought peace and prosperity to England or was an unstable period that culminated in revolution.
15 February 2001
Featuring: Mark Goldie, Richard Ollard, Clare Jackson
The Royal Society
Melvyn Bragg discusses how the formation of the Royal Society heralded the dawning of a new scientific era in the 17th century.
23 March 2006
Featuring: Stephen Pumfrey, Lisa Jardine, Michael Hunter
Individualist anarchists (3)
Camus
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Nobel Prize winning Algerian-French writer and existentialist philosopher Albert Camus.
3 January 2008
Featuring: Peter Dunwoodie, David Walker, Christina Howells
Jorge Luis Borges
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges.
4 January 2007
Featuring: Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn
Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce's groundbreaking 1916 novel about growing up in Catholic Ireland.
26 November 2009
Featuring: Roy Foster, Katherine Mullin, Jeri Johnson
Metaphor theorists (3)
Jorge Luis Borges
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges.
4 January 2007
Featuring: Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn
Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce's groundbreaking 1916 novel about growing up in Catholic Ireland.
26 November 2009
Featuring: Roy Foster, Katherine Mullin, Jeri Johnson
Milton
Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.
7 March 2002
Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden
Philosophers of pessimism (3)
Camus
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Nobel Prize winning Algerian-French writer and existentialist philosopher Albert Camus.
3 January 2008
Featuring: Peter Dunwoodie, David Walker, Christina Howells
Jorge Luis Borges
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges.
4 January 2007
Featuring: Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn
Schopenhauer
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.
29 October 2009
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway
Epistemology of science (3)
Logical Positivism
Melvyn Bragg and guests including Barry Smith discuss Logical Positivism, the radical philosophy of the Vienna Circle.
2 July 2009
Featuring: Barry Smith, Nancy Cartwright, Thomas Uebel
Ockham's Razor
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosophical idea of Ockham’s Razor and the medieval philosopher who gave his name to it, William of Ockham.
31 May 2007
Featuring: Anthony Kenny, Marilyn Adams, Richard Alan Cross
Progress
Melvyn Bragg examines whether while mankind has grown in years and knowledge, it has also progressed in terms of happiness and a truer understanding of the human condition.
18 November 1999
Featuring: Anthony O'Hear, Adam Phillips
Looting (3)
Carthage's Destruction
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the complete destruction of Carthage by Rome, a pivotal moment in world history.
12 February 2009
Featuring: Mary Beard, Jo Quinn, Ellen O'Gorman
Constantinople Siege and Fall
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 1453 siege of Constantinople. A bitter and bloody 53 days that ended a thousand years of the Byzantine Empire.
28 December 2006
Featuring: Roger Crowley, Judith Herrin, Colin Imber
The Boxer Rebellion
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Boxer Rebellion, when the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists purged China of foreign influences in the summer of 1900.
19 March 2009
Featuring: Frances Wood, Rana Mitter, R. G. Tiedemann
German librarians (3)
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
The Brothers Grimm
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm and what they can tell us about the German imagination and 19th-century romantic nationalism.
5 February 2009
Featuring: Juliette Wood, Marina Warner, Tony Phelan
Christian writers (3)
Dickens
Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?
12 July 2001
Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen
Swift's A Modest Proposal
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jonathan Swift's satirical 1729 pamphlet A Modest Proposal, which reveals much about attitudes to the Irish and the poor in 18th-Century Britain.
29 January 2009
Featuring: John Mullan, Judith Hawley, Ian McBride
Tolstoy
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and times of the 19th century Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, whose novels such as War and Peace gave expression to the compelling moral and social questions of their day.
25 April 2002
Featuring: A. N. Wilson, Catriona Kelly, Sarah Hudspith
19th-century deaths from tuberculosis (3)
Bolivar
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and times of Simon Bolivar, hero of the revolutionary wars that liberated Spanish America from Spain.
30 October 2008
Featuring: Anthony McFarlane, John Fisher, Catherine Davies
Kierkegaard
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.
20 March 2008
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt
Thoreau and the American Idyll
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the American 19th century writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau
15 January 2009
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Tim Morris, Stephen Fender
Human evolution (3)
Darwin: On the Origins of Charles Darwin
Melvyn Bragg presents a series about the life and work of Charles Darwin. Darwin's early life and time at Cambridge, where his interests shifted from religion to natural science.
5 January 2009
Featuring: Jim Moore, Steve Jones, David Norman, Colin Higgins
Human Evolution
Melvyn Bragg discusses the story of human evolution, a tale not of one species, but of many – some of whom walked the Earth at the same time.
16 February 2006
Featuring: Steve Jones, Fred Spoor, Margaret Clegg
Progress
Melvyn Bragg examines whether while mankind has grown in years and knowledge, it has also progressed in terms of happiness and a truer understanding of the human condition.
18 November 1999
Featuring: Anthony O'Hear, Adam Phillips
Early Modern period (3)
The Baroque Movement
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the culture of the Baroque, from Bach and Caavaggio to the Colonnades of St Peter’s.
20 November 2008
Featuring: T. C. W. Blanning, Nigel Aston, Helen Hills
The Divine Right of Kings
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Divine Right of Kings. The idea that kingly authority derives from God alone bit deep into the culture of 17th century Britain.
11 October 2007
Featuring: Justin Champion, Thomas Healy, Clare Jackson
The Renaissance
Melvyn Bragg explores the veracity of modern claims about the Renaissance and whether our current perceptions about its role in cultural history stem from a 19th century historian.
8 June 2000
Featuring: Francis Ames-Lewis, Peter Burke, Evelyn Welch
Political concepts (3)
Freedom
Melvyn Bragg discusses what it is to be free, how freedom became such a powerful value and whether there is such a thing as natural freedom or if it is always culturally defined.
4 July 2002
Featuring: John Keane, Bernard Williams, Annabel Brett
Progress
Melvyn Bragg examines whether while mankind has grown in years and knowledge, it has also progressed in terms of happiness and a truer understanding of the human condition.
18 November 1999
Featuring: Anthony O'Hear, Adam Phillips
The Social Contract
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Social Contract. A key idea in political philosophy, it states that political authority is held through a contract with those to be ruled.
7 February 2008
Featuring: Melissa Lane, Susan James, Karen O'Brien
Chemical elements (3)
Carbon
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Carbon, the vital component of all living things
15 June 2006
Featuring: Harry Kroto, Monica Grady, Ken Teo
Chemical elements
Melvyn Bragg explores the history of chemistry, the role of the elements and examines chemistry's continuing mission to understand the behaviour and relationship of these irreducible substances.
25 May 2000
Featuring: Paul Strathern, Mary Archer, John Murrell
Oxygen
Melvyn Bragg discusses the discovery of Oxygen by Joseph Priestley and Antoine Lavoisier and the Anglo-French feud that accompanied it.
15 November 2007
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Jenny Uglow, Hasok Chang
Morality (3)
Altruism
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss altruism, described as “an unselfish attention to the needs of others” but how does this square with Darwin’s theory of Evolution?
23 November 2006
Featuring: Miranda Fricker, Richard Dawkins, John Dupré
Guilt
Melvyn Bragg discusses the moral conscience and take a long hard look at the idea of guilt.
1 November 2007
Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Miranda Fricker, Oliver Davies
Virtue
Melvyn Bragg discusses a history of the concept of virtue from the ancient Greeks to modern ideas, and examines why we need it and what ideals of behaviour provide a universal framework for it.
28 February 2002
Featuring: Galen Strawson, Miranda Fricker, Roger Crisp
Applied and interdisciplinary physics (3)
Meteorology
Melvyn Bragg discusses the fascinating and mystifying science of meteorology.
6 March 2003
Featuring: Vladimir Janković, Richard Hamblyn, Liba Taub
Oceanography
Melvyn Bragg discusses the science of Oceanography which has attempted to unmask the enigma of the oceans and seas.
22 November 2001
Featuring: Margaret Deacon, Tony Rice, Simon Schaffer
Optics
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of optics – from star gazing with a telescope to examining lice under a microscope
1 March 2007
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Jim Bennett, Emily Winterburn
British agnostics (3)
Mill
Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.
18 May 2006
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan
Popper
Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.
8 February 2007
Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright
Wittgenstein
Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.
4 December 2003
Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn
German travel writers (3)
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
Humboldt
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Prussian naturalist and explorer, Alexander Von Humboldt. A hero in South America; Charles Darwin described him as ‘the greatest scientific traveller who ever lived’.
28 September 2006
Featuring: Jason Wilson, Patricia Fara, Jim Secord
Color scientists (3)
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
Maxwell
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and work of the often overlooked 19th century Scottish scientist, and his enormous contribution to the creation of the technological age in which we live.
2 October 2003
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Peter Harman, Joanna Haigh
German autobiographers (3)
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
Wagner
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life, and legacy of the German composer Richard Wagner, mentor of Nietzsche and disciple of Schopenhauer, who changed the face of 19th century opera.
20 June 2002
Featuring: John Deathridge, Lucy Beckett, Michael Tanner
Leaders who took power by coup (3)
Catherine the Great
Melvyn Bragg discusses Catherine the Great who set out to transform Russia from a semi-barbaric country into a model of the ideals of the 18th century French Enlightenment.
23 February 2006
Featuring: Janet Hartley, Simon Dixon, Tony Lentin
Lenin
Melvyn Bragg investigates what drove the Soviet leader Lenin, and enabled him to develop a model to export communism and build an original political system that remained intact for over seventy years.
16 March 2000
Featuring: Robert Service, Vitali Vitaliev
Napoleon and Wellington
Melvyn Bragg discusses the comparative histories of Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington, two titans of nineteenth century history.
25 October 2001
Featuring: Andrew Roberts, Mike Broers, Belinda Beaton
Emerging technologies (3)
Artificial Intelligence
Melvyn Bragg discusses artificial intelligence and whether a computer could imitate the operations of the human mind.
8 December 2005
Featuring: Jon Agar, Alison Adam, Igor Aleksander
Artificial Intelligence
Melvyn Bragg discusses artificial intelligence and whether a computer could imitate the operations of the human mind.
8 December 2005
Featuring: Jon Agar, Alison Adam, Igor Aleksander
Genetic Engineering
Melvyn Bragg discusses the implications of the developments in genetic engineering. Are such advances as the cloning of Dolly the sheep more for the benefit of scientists rather than for humanity?
14 January 1999
Featuring: Grahame Bulfield, Bryan Appleyard
Computational fields of study (3)
Artificial Intelligence
Melvyn Bragg discusses artificial intelligence and whether a computer could imitate the operations of the human mind.
8 December 2005
Featuring: Jon Agar, Alison Adam, Igor Aleksander
Artificial Intelligence
Melvyn Bragg discusses artificial intelligence and whether a computer could imitate the operations of the human mind.
8 December 2005
Featuring: Jon Agar, Alison Adam, Igor Aleksander
Chaos Theory
Melvyn Bragg discusses how Chaos Theory has affected our understanding of the universe and whether there might be an inherent order behind the fluctuations of the stock market or the British weather.
16 May 2002
Featuring: Susan Greenfield, David Papineau, Neil Johnson
Sources of knowledge (3)
Memory
Melvyn Bragg discusses the significance of memory. Is it a repository of events waiting to be plucked to consciousness?
29 May 2003
Featuring: Martin Conway, Mike Kopelman, Kim Graham
Memory and Culture
Melvyn Bragg discusses how our ways of remembering have changed and explores whether memory itself can remain forever unchanged in its role within our psychology.
27 May 1999
Featuring: Malcolm Bowie, Nancy Wood
Perception and the Senses
Melvyn Bragg discusses perception: how the brain reacts to the mass of data continually crowding it and examines what governs our perception of the world.
28 April 2005
Featuring: Richard Gregory, David Moore, Gemma Calvert
Cognition (3)
Imagination
Melvyn Bragg discusses the creatives forces of the imagination, that companion of artists, scientists, leaders and visionaries.
28 November 2002
Featuring: Susan Stuart, Steven Mithen, Semir Zeki
Imagination and Consciousness
Melvyn Bragg investigates how neuroscience can help to explain the enigmas of consciousness and how we are able to imagine things when they are not there; ideas that have long troubled philosophers.
29 June 2000
Featuring: Gerald Edelman, Igor Aleksander, Margaret Boden
The Mind/Body Problem
Melvyn Bragg discusses the history of thought about the mind/body problem in philosophy. Does the mind rule the body or the body rule the mind? And where does the mind reside?
13 January 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Julian Baggini, Sue James
Good and evil (3)
Evil
Melvyn Bragg discusses the notion of evil in western philosophy.
3 May 2001
Featuring: Jones Erwin, Stephen Mulhall, Margaret Atkins
Good and Evil
Melvyn Bragg examines what the discoveries of Darwin and our knowledge of the true physiological nature and history of man has done for us in terms understanding our concepts of good and evil.
1 April 1999
Featuring: Leszek Kołakowski, Galen Strawson
Heroism
Melvyn Bragg discusses what defines a hero, and their place in classical society. Nietzsche, the Romantics, Renaissance idealism and classical tragedy are brought to bear on the age old heroic ideal.
6 May 2004
Featuring: Angie Hobbs, A. C. Grayling, Paul Cartledge
Psychoanalysis (3)
Psychoanalysis and Literature
Melvyn Bragg assesses whether Freudian theory reinvents our appreciation of literature before Freud, and explores how important Freudian analysis is to understanding the great works of literature.
9 November 2000
Featuring: Adam Phillips, Malcolm Bowie, Lisa Appignanesi
Psychoanalysis and democracy
Melvyn Bragg discusses the impact of politics on psychoanalysis and how psychoanalysis itself attempts to resolve the conflicting ideas and voices within our minds.
11 July 2002
Featuring: Adam Phillips, Sally Alexander, Malcolm Bowie
Psychoanalysis and its Legacy
Melvyn Bragg discusses the relevance of psychoanalysis at the end of the 20th century. Has it failed to develop and adapt to an age increasingly dominated by science?
4 February 1999
Featuring: Juliet Mitchell, Adam Phillips
Religious philosophical concepts (3)
Evil
Melvyn Bragg discusses the notion of evil in western philosophy.
3 May 2001
Featuring: Jones Erwin, Stephen Mulhall, Margaret Atkins
Good and Evil
Melvyn Bragg examines what the discoveries of Darwin and our knowledge of the true physiological nature and history of man has done for us in terms understanding our concepts of good and evil.
1 April 1999
Featuring: Leszek Kołakowski, Galen Strawson
The Soul
Melvyn Bragg discusses the spectrum of ideas about the soul, the extent of human individuality, and the history of thought concerning immortality and the afterlife.
6 June 2002
Featuring: Richard Sorabji, Ruth Padel, Martin Palmer
Mathematics (3)
Mathematics
Melvyn Bragg examines the way perceptions of the importance of mathematics have fluctuated in the 20th century and what mathematics can reveal about how life began, and how it might continue.
6 May 1999
Featuring: Ian Stewart, Brian Butterworth
Mathematics and Platonism
Melvyn Bragg discusses whether mathematics is a process of invention or of discovery. And if it is a discovery, how can we be sure that the mathematic we think we have discovered is the right one?
11 January 2001
Featuring: Ian Stewart, Margaret Wertheim, John D. Barrow
Maths and Storytelling
Melvyn Bragg discusses the similar origins of mathematics and storytelling which both require a shape and structure to make any sense. But is it possible to apply mathematical logic to literature?
30 September 1999
Featuring: John Allen Paulos, Marina Warner
Hindu texts, Sanskrit texts (3)
Arthashastra
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ancient Indian Sanskrit text the Arthashastra.
3 March 2022
Featuring: Jessica Frazier, James Hegarty, Deven Patel
The Bhagavad Gita
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the contents and influence of the Bhagavad Gita, one of the most revered texts of Hinduism.
31 March 2011
Featuring: Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, Julius J. Lipner, Jessica Frazier
The Upanishads
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Upanishads, the sacred texts of Hinduism. Dating from about 700 BC, their mystical and philosophical nature still resonates today.
8 November 2012
Featuring: Jessica Frazier, Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, Simon Brodbeck
German Marxist writers, German Marxists, German anti-capitalists (3)
Marx
Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.
14 July 2005
Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones
Rosa Luxemburg
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rosa Luxemburg, 'Red Rosa', a leading revolutionary and agitator in Poland and Germany until her arrest and murder in the Spartacus Revolt 1919.
13 April 2017
Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Mark Jones, Nadine Rossol
Walter Benjamin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable philosopher and critic whose ideas, developed in the 1930s, became highly influential after his death while escaping the Holocaust.
10 February 2022
Featuring: Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger
19th-century French novelists, 19th-century French women writers (3)
Colette
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the novels and life of one of the most remarkable writers of the last century, whose Claudine series was first published under her husband's name.
27 January 2022
Featuring: Diana Holmes, Michèle Roberts, Belinda Jack
George Sand
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work and life of Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin who in C19th France wrote many extremely successful novels, under the name George Sand
6 February 2020
Featuring: Belinda Jack, Angela Ryan, Nigel Harkness
Germaine de Staël
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas, works and life of Germaine de Stael (1766-1817), a literary critic, author, opponent of Napoleon and developer of Romanticism.
16 November 2017
Featuring: Catriona Seth, Alison Finch, Katherine Astbury
French LGBT novelists, 20th-century LGBT people (3)
Colette
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the novels and life of one of the most remarkable writers of the last century, whose Claudine series was first published under her husband's name.
27 January 2022
Featuring: Diana Holmes, Michèle Roberts, Belinda Jack
Proust
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.
17 April 2003
Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser
Simone de Beauvoir
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.
22 October 2015
Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd
Members of the Parliament of Great Britain for English constituencies, British MPs 1780–1784 (3)
Edmund Burke
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke, whose views on revolution in America and France were hugely influential.
3 June 2010
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Richard Bourke, John Keane
Edward Gibbon
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the writer of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, one of the most celebrated works of its kind.
17 June 2021
Featuring: David Womersley, Charlotte Roberts, Karen O’Brien
Wilberforce
In an unusual edition of In Our Time, marking the 1807 Abolition of the Slave Trade, Melvyn Bragg leaves the studio to examine the life of William Wilberforce.
22 February 2007
Featuring
18th-century non-fiction writers, German philosophers (3)
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
Kant's Copernican Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.
3 June 2021
Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan
American novels adapted into plays, American novels adapted into films, American novels adapted into television shows (3)
Great Gatsby
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the great American novels of the 20th Century, where inexplicably rich Jay Gatsby aims to win Daisy Buchanan from her millionaire husband.
14 January 2021
Featuring: Sarah Churchwell, Philip McGowan, William Blazek
Moby Dick
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Moby-Dick (1851) by Herman Melville, the story of Ahab and the white whale, the most popular of around 1,000 ideas that listeners submitted.
7 December 2017
Featuring: Bridget Bennett, Katie McGettigan, Graham Thompson
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss 'Uncle Tom's Cabin', the bestselling American novel of the 19th century which has slavery as its central theme.
8 June 2006
Featuring: Celeste-Marie Bernier, Sarah Meer, Clive Webb
Pharaohs of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt, Historical negationism in ancient Egypt (3)
Akhenaten
Melvyn Bragg and guests Elizabeth Frood, Richard Parkinson and Kate Spence discuss Akhenaten, the ruler who brought revolutionary change to ancient Egypt.
1 October 2009
Featuring: Richard Parkinson, Elizabeth Frood, Kate Spence
Hatshepsut
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hatshepsut, the woman considered one of Egypt's most successful pharaohs.
6 November 2014
Featuring: Elizabeth Frood, Kate Spence, Campbell Price
Tutankhamun
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the the work of Howard Carter's team in 1922, and the extraordinary contents of Tutankhamun's tomb and what it revealed of Egyptian history
26 December 2019
Featuring: Elizabeth Frood, Christina Riggs, John Taylor
Lycée Condorcet alumni, French essayists (3)
Bergson and Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.
9 May 2019
Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair
Lévi-Strauss
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
23 May 2013
Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene
Proust
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.
17 April 2003
Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser
1st-century BC Roman augurs, 1st-century BC Roman consuls (3)
Cicero
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Cicero's political ideas on laws, duty, tyrants and the republic, which he developed as the Roman Republic was threatened by Caesar and civil wars.
25 January 2018
Featuring: Melissa Lane, Catherine Steel, Valentina Arena
Julius Caesar
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and reputation of Julius Caesar, one of the most intriguing figures of Roman history.
2 October 2014
Featuring: Christopher Pelling, Catherine Steel, Maria Wyke
The Augustan Age
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the political regime and cultural influence of the Roman Emperor Augustus.
11 June 2009
Featuring: Mary Beard, Catharine Edwards, Duncan Kennedy
People of the American Enlightenment, 18th-century American writers (3)
Benjamin Franklin
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.
1 March 2012
Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara
Thomas Paine's Common Sense
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.
21 January 2016
Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson
Washington and the American Revolution
Melvyn Bragg discusses the first President of the United States, George Washington, and the people and ideas that saw the American Revolution overthrow British rule in 1775.
24 June 2004
Featuring: Carol Berkin, Simon Middleton, Colin Bonwick
Recipients of the Matteucci Medal, Honorary Members of the USSR Academy of Sciences (3)
Rutherford
Melvyn Bragg discusses Ernest Rutherford. He is seen as the father of nuclear science, a great charismatic figure who mapped the landscape of the sub-atomic world.
19 February 2004
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Jim Al-Khalili, Patricia Fara
The Curies
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the scientific achievements of the Curie family, Marie and Pierre and their daughter Irene Joliot-Curie, all three of whom won Nobel Prizes.
26 March 2015
Featuring: Patricia Fara, Robert Fox, Steven T Bramwell
Thomas Edison
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of Thomas Edison, one of the great inventors and cultural figures of modern America.
9 December 2010
Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Kathleen Burk, Iwan Morus
Bosons, Force carriers (3)
Higgs Boson
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Higgs Boson; the God particle, which explains how all mass behaves. It is a legend among physicists but does it exist?
18 November 2004
Featuring: Jim Al-Khalili, David Wark, Roger Cashmore
The Graviton
Melvyn Bragg discusses the search for the Graviton, a hypothetical elementary particle that offers a unifying theory of gravitational force.
24 November 2005
Featuring: Roger Cashmore, Jim Al-Khalili, Sheila Rowan
The Photon
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the photon, the fundamental particle associated with light.
12 February 2015
Featuring: Frank Close, Wendy Flavell, Susan Cartwright
Ancient history of Pakistan, Ancient history of Afghanistan (3)
Ashoka the Great
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the emperor Ashoka the Great, one of the most celebrated rulers in Indian history.
5 February 2015
Featuring: Jessica Frazier, Naomi Appleton, Richard Gombrich
The Sassanid Empire
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Sassanian Empire, a grand imperial rival to the Roman Empire.
13 December 2007
Featuring: Hugh N. Kennedy, Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis, James Howard-Johnston
The Silk Road
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Silk Road, the trade routes which spanned Asia for over a thousand years, carrying Buddhism to China and paper-making and gunpowder westwards.
3 December 2009
Featuring: Frances Wood, Tim Barrett, Naomi Standen
Consciousness, Phenomenology (3)
Consciousness
Melvyn Bragg examines why the elusiveness and impenetrability of consciousness continues to fascinate both philosophers and scientists. Is the human mind just not built to understand its own basis?
25 November 1999
Featuring: Ted Honderich, Roger Penrose
Phenomenology
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosophical movement phenomenology.
22 January 2015
Featuring: Simon Glendinning, Joanna Hodge, Stephen Mulhall
The Brain and Consciousness
Melvyn Bragg discusses how our increased knowledge of the functioning of the brain has changed our feelings about our own natures, and our approach to the behaviour and treatment of others.
19 November 1998
Featuring: Steven Rose, Dan Robinson
18th-century Irish male writers, 18th-century Irish writers (3)
Bishop Berkeley
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the philosopher George Berkeley, one of the most significant thinkers of the 18th century.
20 March 2014
Featuring: Peter Millican, Tom Stoneham, Michela Massimi
Edmund Burke
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke, whose views on revolution in America and France were hugely influential.
3 June 2010
Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Richard Bourke, John Keane
Swift's A Modest Proposal
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jonathan Swift's satirical 1729 pamphlet A Modest Proposal, which reveals much about attitudes to the Irish and the poor in 18th-Century Britain.
29 January 2009
Featuring: John Mullan, Judith Hawley, Ian McBride
French anti-capitalists, French anti-fascists, French anarchists (3)
Camus
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Nobel Prize winning Algerian-French writer and existentialist philosopher Albert Camus.
3 January 2008
Featuring: Peter Dunwoodie, David Walker, Christina Howells
Sartre
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
7 October 2004
Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells
Simone Weil
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil. Admired by Albert Camus and Iris Murdoch, she achieved a great deal in her short life.
15 November 2012
Featuring: Beatrice Han-Pile, Stephen Plant, David Levy
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Sturm und Drang (3)
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
Sturm und Drang
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the 18th-century German artistic movement known as Sturm und Drang, whose best-known exponents included Goethe and Schiller.
14 October 2010
Featuring: T. C. W. Blanning, Susanne Kord, Maike Oergel
Symbolist dramatists and playwrights, 19th-century Irish poets, 19th-century Irish dramatists and playwrights (3)
Oscar Wilde
Melvyn Bragg discusses Oscar Wilde, the Aesthetes and his literary legacy. Was Wilde a reactionary - the last of the romantics - or was he the midwife to modernism?
6 December 2001
Featuring: Valentine Cunningham, Regenia Gagnier, Neil Sammells
Yeats and Irish Politics
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poet W.B. Yeats and Irish politics from the suspension of home rule to the division of Ireland.
17 April 2008
Featuring: Roy Foster, Fran Brearton, Warwick Gould
Yeats and Mysticism
Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and beliefs of the Irish Poet W B Yeats and explores how a passion for magic and mysticism served and stood alongside his poetry.
31 January 2002
Featuring: Roy Foster, Warwick Gould, Brenda Maddox
19th-century historians, 19th-century travel writers (3)
Dickens
Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?
12 July 2001
Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen
Goethe
Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.
6 April 2006
Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson
Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.
10 February 2000
Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer
English male stage actors, 16th-century English male actors, 17th-century English male actors, William Shakespeare, King's Men (playing company), People educated at King Edward VI School, Stratford-upon-Avon, Burials in Warwickshire, Shakespeare family, People from Stratford-upon-Avon (3)
Shakespeare and Literary Criticism
Melvyn Bragg discusses the enduring popular and academic appeal of Shakespeare and examines whether literary criticism and the academic institution ruins the pleasure of reading.
4 March 1999
Featuring: Harold Bloom, Jacqueline Rose
Shakespeare's Life
Melvyn Bragg discusses what we know about the life of William Shakespeare, a tantalising conundrum that has exercised minds since the day the playwright died.
15 March 2001
Featuring: Katherine Duncan-Jones, John Sutherland, Grace Ioppolo
Shakespeare's Work
Melvyn Bragg discusses whether the work of William Shakespeare is 'not of an age but for all time' or increasingly irrelevant museum pieces embalmed in out of reach language.
11 May 2000
Featuring: Frank Kermode, Michael Bogdanov, Germaine Greer






